Hung Up
by RochelleRene
Summary: A Huddy reboot beginning near the end of season 8
1. Chapter 1

**Author's note: Season 8 was so horrible for me to watch (I know I am not alone) and I haven't rewatched any of it. Despite this, a moment from 8.18 Body and Soul haunts me. It's when Dominika straddles him on the bed and he starts to go for her until the INS calls and she leaves angrily. There is something so… layered about that moment. Of course initially I was like "Dominika, nooooooo!" But there was also this, like, hope for a balm to all this pain he was in, this hope I have always had for House to allow love into his life. But then it was like, "Dominika, nooooooo!" LOL. So I've thought about that moment a lot, where he is needing and lonely and sad and longing, and I felt this intense need to write a fic from that launching point, reinterpreting the moment through my ever-Huddy lens. So I read transcripts of the last episodes (since I still can't watch them without dying small deaths) and this fic is another attempt to reboot the end of the series, keeping much of seasons 6, 7, and 8 the same, but playing with the very end a little and scrambling toward a happier ending. **

**For the FIRST TIME EVER I am publishing this fic incomplete. I have never done that and am pretty terrified of the experience, but I wanna get this out there and I am not entirely sure of the end yet. I will return to it in large chunks, and it won't be an epic 30-chapter thing or anything, but I thought I'd give this publishing style a try.**

**Chapter 1**

House hit rock bottom when a beautiful woman was straddling his hips. He was lying there wallowing in the shittiness of his day bookended by the shittiness of his life when Dominika came in, with her promises that she could relieve that pain. Promising to make him feel good. Promising to love him. And in that moment, he was seriously considering taking her up on it. He was thinking that if a woman was touching him with affection and tenderness – not just the perfunctory mechanics he occasionally paid for – maybe he could close his eyes and pretend it was several years ago. He could pretend it hadn't all spiraled so out of control. He could pretend he could feel something-close-to-happy again.

He was wrestling with the quandary of whether or not to let himself imagine another woman was making love to him, when the goddamn INS called and even the mirage vaporized as well. So he lay there. Alone. Again.

And that's when he felt the impact of hitting the bottom… Not from waking up in a pile of his own puke. Not from a prison gate clanging shut behind him. Not from alienating, literally, everyone in his life. He realized he was at a new low when he'd been willing to cheapen Cuddy's presence in his heart by pretending another woman was her. His rock bottom was comprised of two unalterable facts he faced at the same precise moment, lying there in that bed listening to the rain. First, he still loved her, her alone, after all this time. Second, he couldn't get near her.

Oh, he'd tried. He'd called her many times since he was released from prison, easily finding her phone number through a series of well-placed calls that described "emergencies" and the "urgent need" to get in touch with her. Each time he'd called, she'd hung up the moment he'd spoken and she'd recognized his voice. He'd gone to her once, waiting outside her workplace until she left at lunch. He'd sidled up next to her and said something he'd thought was clever, yet self-deprecating, but she'd simply stopped walking and squared her shoulders to him when she saw his face. Then she courteously warned him, "You can walk away now. If you don't, and if I see you ever again, I will call the police and you will be arrested for violating a restraining order." He was allowed to look into her luminous gray eyes for five more seconds before she turned and continued walking in the direction she'd started in, leaving him standing on the sidewalk.

He was trying to think of another way to reach out, to get just a few words with her so he could have some hope of… what exactly? Of just something. He needed something that was her. But he knew any letters or emails would be promptly discarded, just as his attempts to reach out had been promptly shut down.

At his worst moments, he'd always wanted Cuddy. He wished he could just tell her how he was feeling at this minute, and ask her to save him, like so many times before. But even if he could connect with her in some way, somehow the explanation still seemed tricky: "Remember that prostitute I married in an adolescent stunt to hurt you? Well, I almost just had sex with her, pretending it was you."

But he lay there and knew there were only two options left – becoming a permanent bottom-dweller, or climbing up somehow. And he knew she had always been the one to pull him out of the hole. No matter how despicable he had been, she always stooped to reach a hand out to him. And he always took it eventually.

**[H] [H] [H]**

He tried something he hadn't in previous attempts. Uncensored honesty.

"I need your help," was his opening line when she answered. She hung up. He called again. "I need your help, Cuddy," he repeated. There was no click, but she didn't speak. He waited, figuring that her taking the time to gather any thoughts could only work in his favor, since the status quo had been against him.

"You really have unbelievable nerve," she said in a hushed voice. "Why would I help you with even the slightest thing?"

"You haven't even heard what I need yet. That's what's really ballsy."

"Hmm. A kidney, I suppose. Or money? A loan to help you finance your life of debauchery? Maybe a Vicodin prescription…" Her musings had an acidic quality to them. She was venting. That was good, he figured. She wasn't recovered. She wasn't over him. Hate beat apathy, any day.

"I was wrong," he admitted.

There was a silence, a pause in her thought process. "About what?" she asked carefully.

House swallowed hard. "People can change," he answered. "You… changed me. And now… I don't know how to go back, but I don't know how to be this different man."

There was a full minute of silence. He heard the quiet whisper of the connection or else he'd have thought she'd hung up. She finally responded. "So now I'm under some sort of obligation to help you with that? I don't think you've changed as much as you think, House."

"You aren't obligated, no." He thought for a moment. "I'm just asking you to help me. Which is evidence of change, I might add."

More silence. Then, "I can't fucking believe this."

He waited a beat. "Which part?"

He heard her sigh heavily. "I prepared for everything. Every mode of communication, every cockamamie request. I have an answer planned should you _actually_ need a kidney, whether the inquiry came by email, phone call, or text."

"But I've stumped you?" he asked hopefully, assuming all the prepared responses didn't work in his favor. Stumping was good.

"You're always so… specific. This is vague. I don't know what to say to you right now because I don't even know what you're asking me for."

"Just this."

"What?"

"Not hanging up on me."

He gave her time to think more. Then she asked, "Why?"

He had to think now... _Why?_ "Because this, right now, is the happiest I've been in years."

She hung up.

**[H] [H] [H]**

He wasn't sure how to play this. He decided not to call back immediately. Pestering her, making her feel pushed or pressured or trapped would just send her running for the hills eventually. He needed to be patient and try to just slowly give her pieces of his thoughts, of his message, hoping she could take it in with small doses and not realize she was actually "hearing him out."

He also realized he had _something _now… some chance of talking to her again. He almost procrastinated any future attempts for fear of losing that. He might be only one step above rock bottom, but somehow he was more scared of the fall this time.

But he didn't need to obsess about all of this for too long because she called him.

"Uh…" he answered. He knew her number, but didn't know if she would like that or not, didn't know if he should act like it was her or an unknown number. So he ended up answering in that bizarre way.

"You know what, House? Fuck you. In every fucking way I could possibly articulate that fucking sentiment, fuck you."

"Uh…" he repeated.

"You want truth? That's what you're always after, right? Well let's go over the truth, shall we. Here's some truth for you: You don't get to just do the things you do, then decide you don't want the consequences that came with those choices, and manipulate the people involved to create your little alternate version of reality so that you can be more satisfied with the results of your heinous and thoughtless actions."

He stayed silent, sensing this was some kind of purge that needed to happen. And also, at least a little, knowing he should hear what she was saying because it was all probably true.

"And here's some truth for me: As much as you can draw me into your messy web of a world, it is my responsibility to avoid getting caught in your trap over and over again simply because I keep foolishly holding out hope that eventually you might realize that if you…" she paused, her voice cracking a little," That if you suck the fucking life out of me you won't get to have me anymore."

He stayed silent now because he honestly thought he might cry if he tried to speak.

"And finally some truth for both of us: The truth is, we do so little for each other that is good and so much that is bad." He heard her sigh. "And that has been our truth. Every time. In every fucked-up version of our relationship, whether professional, fraternal, or romantic. I was wrong, House, when I told you we make each other better. We only make each other _want_ to be better, which is very different… And much sadder."

He stayed silent now because there was nothing clever or logical or helpful to refute this argument.

And she hung up.

**[H] [H] [H]**

This time he called back immediately. She didn't speak but it stopped ringing so he just started talking.

"Everything you said is right. Can I see you?"

"What the hell is the matter with you?"

"Not seeing you."

"Did you listen to anything I just said?"

"Yes."

"And you agree with it."

"Yes."

"But you want to see me."

"Yes."

"Because you have nothing else."

"No."

"Then why?"

"Because I want nothing else."

He'd been prepared for her to hang up immediately. But she didn't. They just listened to the silence between them – the constant quiet static that was the sound of all the damage they could not repair – for several minutes.

"Good night, House."

"Good night, Cuddy."

She hung up.

House went to bed and lay there thinking. He was feeling something… some feeling that was strangely familiar, nostalgic. It was both comforting and terrifying. He stared at the ceiling and rubbed his thigh and finally placed the feeling. Hope.


	2. Chapter 2

**Author's note: House's "There is no heaven…" line early in this chapter is lifted from episode transcripts. I don't want to imply I wrote a line I didn't.**

**Chapter 2**

Soon after feeling a spark of hope, House looked into the face of hopelessness. Wilson. Kind, patient, wry Wilson was getting kicked in the nuts and wasn't fighting back. Hearing that his friend had cancer had wrecked him, but helping him through intense chemo in his living room had been as close to a religious experience as House could experience. It was penance, hope, faith, commitment. It was doing hard things just in case there was something better on the other side of the effort. With that, he could deal with this.

So watching his friend slowly curl up to die, refusing to carry on with the battle, enraged him. He looked at nihilism in a new way… Even with no insurance that it would work, he wanted Wilson to try to believe it would; to have faith in the medicine; to have faith in the possibility of recovery.

So he drugged him with Propofol, trying to show him the nothingness of the other side and convince him to fight. Still, when he woke in his office Wilson stood stubbornly resistant, arguing that this simulated death proved nothing. "There is no heaven," House said. "There is no hell. Your soul is not gonna float out of your body and join some great unifying energy force. The fact that you're dying is not gonna change that."

Wilson smiled sadly. "This conversation is futile. We're in different camps, House. But to appease you, let me just say that my life has been good and I don't want the end to be bad."

"You want it to be nothing," House said bitterly. "Don't you see that even if it's bad - messy, ugly - it's better than nothing, better than the void…" he trailed off, his gaze clouding over as his thoughts jumped to some connection he was making that Wilson wasn't privy to. He left abruptly. Some things never change.

House went to his office and drew the blinds. He hadn't called her in weeks. Since he'd found out about Wilson. His heart was so out of shape, he wasn't equipped to deal with both things.

"Let me call you right back," she said in a hushed voice. She hung up and he hung on.

"House, I'm so sorry," she said a few minutes later, without him having to say a word. "It's is the most horrible news. It's tragic and… unfair… and depressing…" She was babbling a little.

"I don't want to talk about Wilson," he replied flatly.

"Okay," she replied, an edge of anxiety creeping into her voice.

"It doesn't have to be good. Me and you," he clarified. "You're right, it never was. But this… nothingness. The space where you used to be… in my day. In my life. It's killing me."

He waited. "I don't want to talk about us," she finally said.

"Okay." More silence, then "He's being an idiot," House groused.

"And there you are, with the most natural, compassionate, human reaction." He could picture her eyeroll even though he couldn't see her, and it made him grin a little. "He's in shock. He's scared. He's hurting. He's not thinking clearly."

"That's no excuse for being an idiot."

"Hmmm. It isn't, eh?" she asked gently.

He hung up.

**[H] [H] [H]**

A few weeks later he smelled her. That's how he knew. When he walked in the building he noticed a few people looking at him, a few whispers, and he figured it was either Wilson dying or some taboo action he'd taken recently and promptly forgotten about. Then he got off the elevator and was walking by Wilson's office on the way to his. The door was closed, he noted, and then he had this unmistakable sensation of her. He realized it was her scent – her perfume, shampoo, skin – and he limped to the door and leaned his ear against it. Others passed by and gave him their usual disapproving glares, but his heart raced for reasons other than the illicit activity. Cuddy was in there. He heard the unmistakable smoky music of her voice. His mind was racing as fast as his heart now. He hadn't prepared for this in the least and felt like some kind of opportunity would slip through his fingers if he didn't get a game plan fast. As the minutes ticked past the hour, the hallway calmed down with people already settled into their next appointments or closed in their offices to get some work done. In the quiet he could hear better.

"Sometimes I feel that way," Wilson was saying. "I'll really surrender the things I can't control and the weight will lift for a little bit. But it comes crashing back when I realize that… That I'm afraid to die."

There was a long silence. He wondered if they were crying. He wondered why Wilson wouldn't fight more if he felt this way. Then he heard her again. "Of course you are. I'd worry about you if you weren't. Knowing it's coming – I mean we all know eventually – but knowing it's sooner than later… It's tortuous."

"But then I go back to the first feeling, you know? It's pointless to sit there worrying about something I can't control." He laughed a little. "Then I'll get a muscle pain or a headache and wonder if this is the beginning of the end, and I'm back to terrified."

"Wilson…" He heard the shakiness in her voice. She _was _crying. "I wish there was anything I could do. I wish I could help you."

"You are," he assured her."Just being here. Being with me."

"I know," she murmured, and House felt sick. He was transported to the beginning of _their_ end, and his inability to do anything to help her when she thought she was staring down the same gunbarrel. But just like she couldn't cure Wilson's cancer, he couldn't… couldn't even… Ugh. No one understood that inability.

Wilson's voice broke his reverie. "I don't know if I'm scared of being alone at the moment I die as much as I am of being alone while I'm dying, you know? It's one thing to send flowers, make phone calls, but it's another to hang out with the guy who's coughing up a lung and pissing himself. I'm afraid people won't want to be with me."

There was a long silence. "He will," she told him.

Wilson chuckled a little bitterly. "I speak of him in the plural now," he joked. Cuddy laughed softly. "Well, he's not sober, so that might help," Wilson offered.

"He loves you, Wilson."

"He loved you."

"It's different."

"Not really. He has a pain threshold. If he can't handle it, he just runs away," Wilson explained.

"Not always," she argued. "I agree, he often does. But sometimes he walks right into the tidal wave, like an idiot, just to see what will happen."

Wilson laughed again. "Yeah, well he's not a swimmer."

"But he won't sink either." There was a pause. "He's plankton." They both started cracking up and House didn't know whether to smile or cry or barge in and yell "Ah-ha!" They started talking about other things then, so he walked down to his office and dropped his stuff on his chair. Then he went out on the balcony and crossed over to Wilson's door and barged on in. They looked up and he saw Wilson roll his eyes, but then he locked his gaze with hers, which was even and controlled. Cuddy, always. Perfectly poised. Until she wasn't.

"Well, would you look what the cancer dragged in!" he exclaimed, dropping onto the couch.

"You know, I still have a right to some privacy," Wilson protested.

"Yeah, I'll remind you of that when I'm wiping your ass in eight months," House replied, not taking his eyes off Cuddy.

"Hello, House," she said coolly.

"Hey," he said, smirking. It was awkward and tense, but completely delicious to him. It was like the bad old days. And she was just as irritated and beautiful.

"I'm just in town to see Wilson for a while," she explained.

"Cool," he replied. "Wanna ditch him and grab some coffee?"

She had the hint of smirk at the corner of her mouth, but her eyes were wide and sad. "No, House."

"Come on, Cuddy. You can't come here and not just have a cup of coffee with me."

"Um, actually, I can do whatever the hell I want. Without you."

They stared at each other. "House – " Wilson began.

"It's fine, Wilson. I'm leaving," House assured him. "Just had to see if it was the real deal or if I was hallucinating again." He stood up to leave. When his hand touched the door handle she spoke.

"It's good to see you, House."

He didn't turn around. "Is it?"

She sighed. "I don't know."

"Well, if you need to collect more data, you know where to see me again." He pushed through the door and walked back to his office. He dropped into his chair. Chase and Adams were waiting for him, scans in hand. He was happy for the distraction. They stuck the scans onto the light box and discussed symptoms and test results. He saw Wilson walk by the glass walls while he was talking to them and he raised his eyebrows at him as he passed. House didn't know what to make of it.

Eventually his team left and he was alone. He was sitting at his desk, staring into space when his phone rang.

"I should have warned you I was coming. I'm sorry if it's… shaken you up," she said.

"I like when you shake me up."

"Don't do that."

"What?"

"Don't act like this is… normal. We aren't normal. We aren't fine. We aren't five years ago just because Wilson is sick."

"You mean because Wilson is dead."

"If that's how you're going to treat him for the next year, I'm even happier I came to see him."

"Of course! Cuddy to the rescue. Better save the impotent little man from his damaged, heartless _best friend_."

"You're not mad at me," she said plainly, like she was diffusing a tantrum.

He paused. "I am a little," he replied. She knew she'd hurt his feelings. No use hiding it.

"House." She sounded exhausted. "I can't be seen having lunch with a man who assaulted me three years ago."

"I didn't assault you," he said, angry at the implication.

She said nothing.

"I didn't assault _you,_" he repeated.

She said nothing. He suddenly had a piercing headache between his temples. He felt nauseous.

"Dammit, Cuddy!" he yelled at first. Then his voice hitched a little. "I'm so sorry," he said. And he was.

Cuddy sighed a long, slow, tired sigh. "I hope that's true."

It suddenly occurred to him… Where was she? They'd been together in Wilson's office a mere twenty minutes ago. She couldn't be talking this openly anywhere in the hospital - where the walls had ears - and she didn't have a private space here anymore. Suddenly he stood up and went to the glass door to the balcony, staring across the concrete space to the other glass door, where she stood, phone to her ear, staring back at him.

"Just stop there," she ordered him. They stared at each other through the panes of glass.

"It was like… Like someone throwing a dish at the wall during an argument," he tried to explain. "I just took it to an eleven. Like I always do," he lamented. "But, it was... an isolated event. You can't pretend it was a pattern. I never… hurt you."

He saw tears start to pool in her eyes. "People who throw a dish once sometimes do it again," she murmured into the phone. "I can't risk that. Not when you go to eleven."

Suddenly he just wanted to hold her so badly, to kiss her face everywhere and say he was sorry until he had no more voice, and just keep her close until she trusted him again. He swung open his glass door and loped clumsily over the balcony divider, arriving on the other side of her glass in seconds. Cuddy stepped back a bit, startled.

He kept one hand on his phone, holding it to his ear to not miss a breath. With the other, he placed his palm against the glass and looked down into her eyes. They stared at each other like zoo exhibits, only he was looking at some beautiful, regal, dignified creature – a phoenix – and she was looking at a powerful, mesmerizing, unpredictable beast. Something that could destroy her if she wasn't careful. But the beast stood there looking at her, almost purring, and she had to remind herself of its claws and teeth.

She raised her own hand and put it to his, sandwiching the glass between their skin.

"Is it good to see me?" he asked.

Finally a single tear fell. "I don't know," she whispered.


	3. Chapter 3

**Author's note: I have had this little knot in my stomach since starting this fic and I just want to say one thing clearly before I go on with it. These stories are fantasies for me. They are only tangentially connected to views about real life and real relationships. The truth is, what House did to Cuddy is violence and it is violence that is correlated in real life with many other behaviors that would make it foolish to deal with him again. That's why I don't write post-crash very often, and why we were all so saddened by that finale. But these are fictional characters, and so we are allowed to pretend House is some kind of outlier in the trend, someone who could do something like that and still be redeemable, because it makes for a dramatic and interesting love story. But much like a romance novel might have a mysterious stranger tear off the bodice of the heroine, when in real life we would be appalled if the mysterious guy at work tore our shirts open, the fantasy is something fun and exciting that in real life would be pretty fucked up. Basically what I am saying - conscious of all the women out there of all situations and ages that read these fics - is that I do not want this fic of reconciliation in any way to make you think you should stand for any degree of violence in your life. I hope this makes sense. **

**And after all that, buckle up for more of this crazy ride…**

**Chapter 3**

There they stood, looking at each other through the door, the tension palpable as they spun wariness and attraction together, seeing if they could mix.

"If we're gonna make out through this glass, can I wipe my side off without breaking the mood?" he murmured into the phone.

Cuddy rolled her eyes, composing herself. "Yeah, House. I won't have coffee with you, but I'll make out with you."

He smirked at her. "Way better than vice versa." She actually smiled a little.

Wilson came in at that moment and paused, surveying the scene. "If you two are gonna make out through glass in _my_ office, I get to post pics."

Cuddy stepped back and gazed at the ground, bashful. House shouted through the door, "See that! Right there! That's why that nerd is my best friend."

Cuddy started gathering her coat and purse, hanging up her phone without comment. "I have to go meet Foreman for lunch," she explained just as House was swinging the door open.

"Oh, sure. You'll have lunch with _him_. Do you know how often he crashes into things? Left and right!"

Cuddy paused and narrowed her eyes at him. "Kidding around about what you did is not appropriate. Got it? Put it somewhere between the Holocaust and rape on the off-limit topics list."

House met her stare. "Damn. I have a great Nazi incest joke." Cuddy sneered a little and turned to walk out, all-too-eagerly.

"She's running away from me," House commented to Wilson, sitting down on the chair across from his desk.

"She _is_ a smart woman," Wilson commented distractedly, placing some folders in his filing cabinet.

"Running is good. Means she doesn't trust herself."

Wilson sighed and flopped into his desk chair. "God, you're a hypocrite." House looked at him, confused. "You rant about the futile waste of time that is religion, but you are nothing but a zealot when it comes to that woman."

"Oh spare me your metaphors. They're never as clever as mine."

"It's hardly a metaphor!" Wilson said emphatically. "You relate to her like she's a goddess. When you're in her graces, you want to do her will. When she doesn't give you what you want, you pretend she's a powerless sham. You look to her for acceptance, forgiveness, the very definition of your life."

"You're getting melodramatic in your old age."

Wilson chuckled and leaned back in his chair. "I've never seen you dedicate more time and thought to anything than you do to this woman. But - like a religious fanatic - you can't even see reality anymore."

"Really. Do enlighten me, oh sage one."

"She isn't a goddess, House," Wilson said, a bit-too-loudly. "She can't define your life. She can't forgive or accept in you what you won't forgive and accept in yourself." He paused while House pretended to be uninterested. "She's just a person – a remarkable one – but a fallible person who's as fucked up as the rest of us. Almost as fucked up as you, I'd say, since she wastes as much of her time on you as you do on her."

"What's your point, Wilson?' House asked quietly, biting his thumbnail.

Wilson was pensive for a moment. "We're not friends because I make the same stupid jokes as you, House."

House looked at him. "You're not gonna tell me you're gay for me, are you?"

"We're friends because I'm good at relationships. I carry the brunt of the work when it comes to you and me, since you're basically a ten-year-old with a Vicodin addiction."

"A ten-year-old _in chronic pain._" House clarified, snippily.

"You say tomato, I say to-mah-to." Wilson took a deep breath. "The reason you and Cuddy don't work is that neither of you are any good at this. You, as stated, completely suck at dealing with anyone."

"Thanks, ole buddy."

"And Cuddy… Well, she's amazing and accomplished and brilliant and beautiful and to the average observer seems to have it all together. She runs hospitals, for crying out loud. We've seen her deal with life and death decisions, bloated bureaucracy, huge financial decisions, angry boards, lockdowns, disease outbreaks… She does it all with interpersonal grace and every hair in place."

"As do I," House said. "We're perfect."

Wilson rolled his eyes. "I said grace, and I said hair."

"Finish this fucking monologue already."

"In spite of this seeming perfection, I've seen the woman totally lose it over three things. Rachel, her mother, and you." House met his eyes and started listening a little more closely. "She hides it better than you, but she sucks at relationships too. She's terrified of opening up, of being hurt, of losing control, of not being right." Wilson smiled at him. "Sound familiar?"

"Okay, so we're the blind leading the blind. If that's the case, how does she know how bad I am at it? Why is she so hung up on every little thing I do wrong?"

"Even a blind person knows when they've bumped into something," Wilson explained. "You never realized you could hurt her. Really hurt her. You think she's above it all somehow. That she can read your mind and actions in some omniscient way. But she can't. She sees what you do and tries to figure out what you think and feel. Just like the rest of us. And you did some fucked up shit."

House sat there quietly for a moment, reflecting on his balcony exchange with Cuddy. "I broke your arm that day," he said. Wilson just stared, waiting for his point. "Are you scared of me? Scared I'd hurt you?"

Wilson smirked. "I was scared of that long before you crashed your car into her house."

"Really?" House asked, genuinely surprised.

"You really don't get that we can't get into your mind, do you? You act like a crazy person half the time and are indignant when your behavior is viewed with skepticism. We don't see the logic in your head, House, so who knows what you could do? You need to actually interact with people to let them in there."

"I let you in there," he said defensively.

"Sometimes," Wilson admitted. "Enough to keep me interested. Like a chimp who charms you right before he rips your face off."

They sat in silence for a few minutes. Then House lamented, "I don't know what she wants me to do."

"Neither does she," Wilson pointed out, "but as the one person who is at least functional at relationships, I'll tell you that before you _do _anything more, you have to face what you did."

"I've faced it. I spent a fucking year in prison facing it."

"Bullshit," Wilson shot back. "You loved prison."

"Oh yeah. Those guys know how to party."

"You loved it because it was this concrete absolution. As long as you did time – which you made sure you would acting as your own lawyer like an idiot – no one could ask any more of you. No one could ask you to actually think about the gravity of what you did or the reasons why you did it. And you love the easy way out, House. Always have."

House glared at him. "You get really pissy when you're dying, you know that?" He looked out the window. "I don't know why I did it. I really don't."

"That's my point. You do everything for a reason, and yet you won't look at why you did this thing that is a milestone in your life. Cuddy, on the other hand… Her point isn't even that you don't know why you did it." House looked back at him in inquiry. "Her point is you don't even know what you did."

"When did you guys have all these great heart-to-hearts?" he asked bitterly.

"The last one was," Wilson glanced at his watch, "about ninety minutes ago."

House grew thoughtful again. "So you think I should let her go? Lose my religion?" he joked.

Wilson gave him the same cryptic eyebrow raise he gave him from the hallway. "Perhaps."

"'Perhaps.' You're such a pussy. Take a stand, Wilson. Should I move on or not?" He waited. "You don't know either, do you?" House accused.

"I know the stakes are high. For both of you. I know the odds are against you. But I know you're a gambling man, and lucky-as-hell when you take risks."

"What you call luck, I call genius."

"You say tomato, I say freakish-ability-to-manipulate-people."

**[H] [H] [H]**

Back in his apartment that night, soaking his leg in a scalding bath, he thought about Wilson's take on the whole thing. He thought about what he looked for from Cuddy, beyond sex and banter. He thought about how she was always under his skin, no matter what he did to distract himself. Over the years, thinking about her had made him feel good – accepted, important, complete – and bad – guilty, undeserving, inept. Was she his religion? Was she his hope for more than this? The way his thoughts always trickled back to her in his moments of quiet, like a mantra or meditation, told him Wilson wasn't that far off.

He then thought about Wilson's assessment of Cuddy as just as big a mess as he was. It made him uncomfortable. He didn't like the idea of her desire for him being… a character flaw. If it was an error in judgment, well, how could that be his redemption? And now we're back to religion.

Fuck Wilson. What the hell did he know about any of it? Except all of it.

Finally he thought about Wilson's challenge to him to think more about the crash… about what it had meant… what it had done. House pawed over the tub ledge for his Vicodin and tried to think about Cuddy naked instead. But he was unsettled. He saw her a little differently right now, not as powerful and strong and withholding love, but as vulnerable and lost and scared to love. Vulnerable was not sexy to him. He had enough vulnerable.

But vulnerable did make him want to be near her. To hold her. To do something.

When his phone rang, one glace at the display showing Cuddy calling him at 12:43AM and the subsequent surge that went through him – a jolt of joy, a twist of hurt, and a warm bath of hope – told him Wilson was right about all of it.

"Hey."


	4. Chapter 4

**Chapter 4**

"Hello?" House said when there was no response. He heard the subtle click of disconnection when she hung up. House, being House, called back.

"Hey," she said now, her voice quiet and a little hoarse.

"You kinda suck at prank phone calls," he teased. He heard her stifle a tiny laugh.

"Don't do that," she said. "Don't make me laugh." They were silent for a few moments. He was trying to get a read on her, on what this was about, without letting his heart get ahead of his brain. He needed to collect information - something for his mind to work on - to distract him from the fireworks exploding in his chest.

"Why did you call?" he asked gently, managing to get out of the tub and start haphazardly drying off. He was excited. He needed to pace.

"I don't know," she said, exhaustion in her voice.

"Why did you hang up?"

She sighed. "I don't know." He could sense that she was on the verge of being overwhelmed, but he didn't know in which direction. He thought about his conversation with Wilson – what he asked of her, what she was capable of…

"Relax, Cuddy. It's just a phone call. It's not… forgiveness." He wrapped a towel around his waist as he went to find pants, feeling strangely modest, like she was in there with him.

"It's never just a phone call with you," she complained.

"Well, okay, it's a phone call at one in the morning. But just a phone call."

He heard her suck in her breath. "A phone call… at one in the morning… from my car… parked outside your building." House dropped the handful of tee shirts he'd been shoving aside in a search for underwear and took long limping strides across his apartment to look out his living room window, not realizing until he got there that he didn't even know what kind of car she drove now.

"But just a phone call," he mumbled, eyes combing the street for some sign of life.

"I don't know why I can't just leave you in my past, why I can't just… leave you alone."

House considered the question. "You're a perfectionist. And I'm the duck that wouldn't get in the row."

"You think?" she asked, authentically entertaining theories. "You think it's all about the challenge of you?"

Now House sighed. "I don't know, Cuddy." He rubbed his hand over his face. "I've asked myself the same question."

"You also wonder why you can't get over yourself?" He heard her snicker.

"Yes. I've determined it's either my benevolence or my philanthropy work. Whatever it is, I just can't let me go." She laughed and he smiled, catching his reflection in the window and realizing how rarely he thought of himself as smiling.

"Can we just talk?" she asked. "Not about us, or Wilson, or anything important?"

"Yeah. Of course, yeah…" There was a pause. A million teasing, flirtatious lines ran through his head, but all he really wanted to do was be near her again, so instead he asked, "How was lunch with Foreman?"

"Oh, fine," she answered. "That guy just never stops thinking highly of himself, does he?"

House laughed a little. "Yeah, he's pretty proud of himself."

"I mean, he should be. He's very accomplished. But he really never misses an opportunity to let you know it."

"He does it more with authority figures," House explained. "I remember the first year he was with me…"

And so began two hours of conversation that truly didn't cover anything important, but it might have been one of the most important conversations of their relationship. They found the groove they had slipped out of the moment they became a couple, when their mutual terror over what this could do to them replaced their mutual fantasy of how good it could be. Somewhere between that dusty dawn kiss in his bathroom and the moment she walked out two days later, they had lost faith in each other. He'd seen it quickly and addressed it, and she'd swept it away as paranoid fears because she didn't want to feel that she'd doomed them to grief the moment she'd given them what they'd wanted for so long.

But it hadn't gone away, House thought now. Where they had once been conscious of each other's physical presence, raised eyebrows, sly smirks, and brushes of contact, they were then conscious of every furrowed brow and disapproving click of the tongue as a possible death omen. Where they had once confronted and hashed out and offered honest-if-painful feedback, they then avoided and lied and spent time analyzing short outbursts while staring out windows. Where they once had gone to each other – albeit in messy fumbling ways – they then ran from each other, for fear of being told it was over.

And so when she hurt him most, he didn't remember how to burst in her door and yell at her and tell her plainly how she was being illogical. He had lost the person who could take the manifestations of his anger and his logic and his pain, and love him anyway. And he was alone. He had nowhere to send the hurt.

And he knew then why he had done what he'd done. He'd wanted her to see him again, and to take the impact of his pain and anger and fucked up baggage, and love him anyway. Maybe she really was his only faith, because he remembered being pissed and indignant and powerless, and who did he go to with that shit? And there she was on the other side of the dining room window, smiling and socializing, oblivious to his need for her.

So he broke the fucking window.

He came to this realization slowly, as they talked. It was good because it allowed his mind to work on something other than manipulating her into coming upstairs. But once he'd realized it, it underscored what he'd seen when he spoke with Wilson about even the bad being better than the nothing. He needed her in his life, in whatever way possible, because somewhere along these decades she had become what made him work. It may have been incremental, but she _had_ made him better. And it may have been combative and loud and nasty at times, but she did handle his pain and comfort him. And no one - he was positive of this - no one else could do that.

He'd pulled on jeans and a tee shirt while they'd talked, and thank goodness because now all he wanted was to get to her. He shoved his feet into sneakers discarded by the couch and went downstairs as fast he could. On the street he scanned the cars, looking for one with movement. He finally found her, parked almost at the end of the block, leaning back in her seat, her head against the window. They were still talking and so she was mid-sentence in a description of a scan that was the main source of evidence in a malpractice suit against one of her doctors, when he tapped on the glass of the passenger window.

"Shit!" she yelled, rearing up in her seat and pressing herself against the driver's side door. She saw his face in the glass and gave him a _what-the-hell_ look and unlocked the car. He slid in and hung up his phone. He grinned at her.

"Hey."

She grinned back, still breathless from the startle. "God, you're an asshole. How would that not scare the hell out of me?"

"You shouldn't sit in your car at night," he told her. "Do you have any idea how many creepy cripples are crawling around out here."

"At least one," she said, running her hands over her hair, under her eyes. She was haphazardly grooming, he noted. They stared at each other across the car. "Why'd you come down here?" she asked him.

"I don't know," he lied.

Cuddy smirked at him. "It _is_ good to see you." He just looked at her, letting himself take in her eyes and her steely little smirk, enjoying the proximity. She was still in work clothes - a simple gray dress under her trench and her mile-high heels.

"You can't sit in your car all night," he finally said.

"Ooooh, swoon. Does that line work on all the girls?" she teased.

"All the girls who talk to me on the phone for two hours while parked outside my building in the middle of the night."

"Maybe I was about to tell you I had to get going," she said.

"Maybe I was about to ask you not to go."

Cuddy let out a shaky breath. "House, I'm… I'm not sure what I'm doing here, but it isn't… I can't…"

"It's just a phone call, remember?" he said. "Now come in and get warm and you can have something to drink and go to sleep." She looked both tempted and hesitant. "Unless you've had some kind of drastic bladder surgery in the last years, I know you have to pee like crazy right now." She grinned a little. "I have a toiiiiileeeet…" he sang, like he was offering a child candy.

She grabbed her purse and opened her car door, and he leapt out of his side to meet her at the curb. They walked side by side toward his building door and he impulsively took her hand. She didn't even tense up, but just curled her fingers around his like it was the most natural thing to do. They walked upstairs wordlessly and entered his apartment. They stood there for a moment after he took her coat and laid it on a chair, then she giggled and kicked off her shoes and ran to the bathroom in haste.

When she emerged he was waiting at the end of the hallway, two drinks in his hand. He walked closer and handed one to her. She sipped and made a little face. "Whew. I haven't had scotch since we broke up."

"Funny," he replied, "I've had more." She mimed like she'd been socked in the gut and they smiled at each other. "So, you can have the bed. I'll take the couch cuz everyone knows I'm Mr. Hospitality."

She looked at him, her smile fading. "Will you sleep with me?" she asked him. "I mean… just sleep with me." She was leaning against the wall across from his bedroom door. He scratched the back of his head, glanced at the floor. "I'm not gonna be able to sleep anyway with you out there on the couch. It's stupid." He nodded and she turned to go into his room and she reached out for his hand this time.

They lay on the bed, facing each other, but not touching. He pulled the blanket up around them and watched her close her eyes. He ran his fingers over a lock of hair, curling it around her ear, watching her relax into the pillow.

"I did it because I missed you, Cuddy."

She opened her eyes slowly. "I know, House," she told him, as if the whole meaning of that – all that he had assembled while they talked – had been clear to her since the beginning.

He looked confused. "What do you want me to do? What are you wanting me to say?"

She reached out and cupped his face, running her thumb over his eyebrow to smooth out the tension knitted there. "I never really figured that out because I gave up thinking you were capable of it anyway."

"Why?" he asked, almost desperately.

She sighed. "You want the ends to justify the means, House. But you're so narrow in your perspective. You look at _your _ ends, and you consider brief moments in time." She paused. "I don't mean to be cryptic. It's just… How do I explain to you what it's like to think like a different person? A person who cares about someone more than himself?"

"I care about you," he insisted.

"I know you do. I know you care about me a lot." The implication hung there.

"So, what?" he finally said, frustrated. "I'm supposed to be happier for you getting rid of me, moving on to other people, than I am sad for myself? That's nobility or morality or whatever it is you're looking for?"

"It's not… God, I don't know how to explain this. You'll know it if you ever feel it. Something like that is possible."

"In humans?" he asked, sarcastically.

"It is," she told him. "Some people will suffer pain so someone else doesn't, or will hold on to their own pain to not inflict it on another. When they love that person." He just stared at her. "Consider where you've come close," she told him. "Consider your mom. Or Wilson. Or even me. And consider what stops you from letting us come first in spite of what it does to you. You stop because you have to consider our pain." She found his hand and squeezed it. "You have a lot of hurt, House. I know this. You had a father who thought nothing of hurting you, you had a major physical trauma that will never heal… But you are so focused on your pain - or rather numbing it - that you don't have room for anyone else's. You dismiss ours because there's no way it'll ever measure up to yours. But we hurt too, House. And… and sometimes you're the one who hurts us. Which makes the dismissal worse."

He looked at her like she was speaking a foreign language. "When did you get me all figured out?" he asked, gently but with a bit of a bite.

Cuddy snorted. "I've spent a lot of money on therapy that ends up psychoanalyzing _you_," she teased. "I still don't have a clue about myself." She laughed. "What I'm saying might make sense to you eventually. Think about it." She grinned at him. "But you might wanna get some sleep first." Her eyes fell closed and he lay next to her, eventually falling asleep to the warmth of her body and the rhythm of her breath.

**[H] [H] [H]**

He woke when she startled, sitting up and looking around for a clock. He saw in her face that she had crossed over into looking at things in the harsh light of day, without the night shadows to soften the edges. And she was panicking.

"I have to go," she said when she saw him staring at her.

"Why? Where do you have to be?"

"I'm staying at Wilson's. He's probably freaking out."

"I'm sure he knows where you are."

Cuddy snorted. "Yeah, cuz I'm so fucking predictable," she said bitterly, standing up.

"Cuz _we're _so predictable," he clarified, trying to say that this wasn't her mistake, but rather their connection. But she was up now, smoothing her hair as she padded down the hallway, and now he was panicking. "Come on. Just call Wilson. We'll have breakfast. Or sex, if you prefer." He was trying to make her laugh, to bring back the intimate exchanges of last night. But she was undeterred, pulling her coat on already. "Cuddy."

"I can't, House. I have to go," she answered matter-of-factly. She looked at him evenly, but he could see the little cracks in her armor. She wasn't okay any more than he was.

"Why?"

She bit her lip. "Like you said. It was just a phone call. Not forgiveness."

House shook his head, overwhelmed with the thoughts streaming through it. "God, this fucking apartment!" he yelled, laughing a little. "How many times will you mend and break my heart in here?"

Cuddy froze and looked at him, tearing up a little. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry, House. I shouldn't have done any of this. I shouldn't have put us through it." She turned away from him and grabbed her purse.

"Don't go, Cuddy. Please."

"I have to," she whispered, digging around in her purse, as if it contained some guidance on what to do. He caught her arm lightly and she turned back to look at him.

"Why can't you just stay? Why can't we just… try this again?"

She looked at him sadly. "Don't you see? It's because you have to ask that." And she left.


	5. Chapter 5

**Chapter 5**

"You took two cases," Wilson said as he walked into House's office. He pointed his finger at him accusingly.

House looked at him over the wire rims of his glasses. "You've been reading my diary again."

"Don't need to. Word gets around when the office slacker suddenly starts fishing for more work."

"Or when you insist on babysitting an adult man."

"What's wrong?" Wilson asked gently, sitting in a chair across from House.

"Nothing." House met his eyes as he said it, then returned to flipping through a file.

"You're using work to distract yourself."

"Go away, Wilson. I have a shrink."

"That you never see."

"That's our approach. Why don't you try it?"

"Cuddy didn't come home last night."

"How do you fit the oncology into your demanding meddling schedule?"

"Was she with you?"

"Why don't you ask her?"

"I did."

"And?"

"She told me to ask you." House couldn't help grinning; he loved that woman. "Spill it," Wilson ordered.

"She came over. We talked. She left."

"Did you sleep with her?"

"Wilson, you know I don't kiss and tell… I do, however, _not _kiss and tell. And no, nothing physical happened." Wilson gave him a skeptical look. "I swear," House laughed. "Go ask the lady."

"I did," Wilson said. "She said you fucked like teenagers."

House smirked at him. "You can't bluff a bluffer," he told Wilson. "Especially when you look like someone on a fifties sit-com."

"_Nothing_ physical?" Wilson asked again. House shook his head. "Then what happened metaphysically? What are you avoiding thinking about?"

"See, talking about it kinda messes up the avoidance of thinking about it."

"Did you argue? Did she say she loves you? Did you _almost_ have sex?"

Chase came in with the rest of the team. "White count's higher, but labs are all negative."

House looked at Wilson and wiggled his eyebrows dramatically. "Ooooh, a cliffhanger… Get out."

**[H] [H] [H]**

"Hey." He heard her voice and looked up sharply, literally dropping what he'd been doing. The file of films and tissue-thin lab papers splayed out across his desk.

"Hey."

"I'm, uh… I'm leaving tomorrow. I just thought I should let you know."

House felt a little jolt of panic zip through him. "I wish you'd notify me of your arrivals as clearly as you do with your departures."

Cuddy offered a sad half-smile. "We're better at goodbyes than hellos."

"I beg to differ," House countered.

"You always do," she teased. They stared at each other. "Okay, so… Maybe we'll talk sometime soon. I'll check in with you on Wilson… Make sure I'm getting the real story," she said in a silly conspiratorial voice, winking at him. She sort-of fake chuckled and started turning for the door.

House's heart was slowly crumbling. "Alrighty," he sang. "See you at the funeral."

Cuddy whirled around and gave him a disgusted look. "God, House. Why would you say something like that?"

"Oh, that's not what we're doing?" he asked, a sharp edge to his tone. "Comforting each other during crises and then pretending that we don't exist the rest of the time?"

"That's not what this is."

He stood up, abruptly. "So what is it, Cuddy?"

"I'm trying to be as healthy as I can about this! I screwed up last night. I'm sorry. You act like this is simple!"

"You act like this is hard!" They stared at each other. House was shaking a little. He wanted a Vicodin so bad, but didn't think that would help the situation. He inhaled slowly. "It is simple, Cuddy. Do you still love me or not?"

"We loved each other before, House. There's more to it than that."

"What more? We screw up but we love each other so we stay together. Even if the other one is fucking it up. Quitting just isn't… isn't an option. It shouldn't have been an option, Cuddy!"

"What are we talking about here, House?"

"It was a small relapse. I know it was ridiculously bad timing, but isn't that the shit that usually causes a relapse? Why couldn't you get past that? You let me practice medicine in your hospital on Vicodin every day for years… Lives in my hands. Then I need it to be there for you, to be strong for you, and you act like I was some sort of junkie loser incapable of connection. I was there, Cuddy! I did it! I showed up! And all you saw was my fuck up. Which is fine! We're always hard on each other. But be hard on me. Yell at me. Make me go back to fucking rehab! But you can't just give up on this! You can't just say it isn't what we're supposed to do! We worked too hard to get there to throw it all away over bullshit screw-ups."

She stared at him, stunned by this unloading of grief. "Wow… You're really hung up on… You really are missing the point, aren't you?"

"Yeah," he replied sarcastically. "I ask the wrong questions, I miss your secret point. So tell me! What do you want from me?"

"House, I don't know what's the matter with you. All that stuff… That's messy and difficult, yeah, but you are ignoring the fucking elephant in the room. Or should I say the fucking Dodge in the dining room?"

He stared at her and his hurt turned into anger because she still wouldn't talk to him about _all _of it. She was just leaving again. "You want to ignore all the rest of it because _you're_ part of it. I gave you a fucking gift, Cuddy. I did that and you could run away from this and feel blameless. It's all on me."

He saw her shaking now and tears of rage were filling her eyes. "You call what you did a gift?" she hissed at him. She smiled suddenly. "I'll send you a thank you note." And she was gone.

**[H] [H] [H]**

He tried to let her go then, by hating her. He tended to his anger like a fire, but nonetheless over the subsequent hours it faded to embers and he was left with a big black pile of useless remains. He was left with nothing. He felt that same goddamn urge that both plagued him and convinced him this was meant to be – the constant urge to talk to her, even if "talk" meant fighting, screaming, deflecting, denying, joking, reminiscing… Whatever. He felt like if he could just get her alone again - like the night before - they'd find their way back. He knew that something pulled her to him, even through her anger and trepidation, and led her to his apartment in the middle of the night. And that something, he liked to think, was something close to love.

He knocked on Wilson's door a little after eight. Wilson opened it wide and walked back toward his kitchen, inviting him in without words.

"Where is she?" House asked.

"Who?"

"Lady Gaga. Cuddy, you moron."

"Cuddy? She's not here. Is that why you're here?"

"Where is she?" House asked again, a little anxiety creeping into his voice.

"She's in a hotel."

"Why?"

Wilson shrugged. "Leaving early. Didn't want to disturb me. Blah blah."

"What hotel?"

"I don't know."

"Come on, Wilson I don't have time for this shit."

"Well, apparently neither does she. She wouldn't tell me specifically so I couldn't tell you."

House stared at him, wracking his brain for how to find her. It occurred to him suddenly that he knew her car now. He could just cruise the main streets, looking for her car in the parking lots. He knew it seemed desperate, but… he was.

He turned suddenly and exited right out the door he'd just entered. "House!" Wilson called after him. "It's not a good idea. House!" House was ignoring him to get outside and on his bike as quickly as possible. "She's not… She's not alone there, House!" Wilson yelled.

Not alone there? What the hell did that mean, House thought as he put on his helmet, revved the engine and took off. She's with a boyfriend? Someone new? Someone old? His mind was whirring.

It didn't matter. He knew this wasn't going to be easy anyway, so what was the big deal about another bump in the road. He began cruising through the parking lots of the nicest hotels in the city, two of which had parking garages he had to cruise up, then down. He saw her car on the fifth hotel, cruised close to hop off and scan the seats, and sure enough spotted a lipstick in the cup holder that he recognized as her brand. He parked and headed inside.

"Hi. My name is Dr. Wilson," he told the lady at the front desk." I have a friend staying here tonight. Dr. Lisa Cuddy? In fact she's been staying at my place. She's been visiting me because I'm _dying of cancer_." He stretched out the last part with his characteristic flair for drama. The woman gave him a look that bounced between pity and confusion. "The thing is… I just really feel badly about how I said goodbye to her. She was at my work and I was rushed," House added a little crack to his voice for embellishment. "So I just wanted to see her one more time in case… Well, in case…" Another crack and a wince.

"Sure, sure," the woman replied. "I can try to call her down for you." She went to pick up the phone. House placed his hand over hers briefly to stop her.

"Actually, would it be okay if I just went up to her room? To surprise her? I really don't want to say goodbye in such a public place."

The woman made a pained expression. Clearly she wasn't supposed to permit such things. "Maybe I could call her and ask her if I can just send you up…" She thought aloud.

House's mind raced. "Um… yeah. Yeah. That would be great."

The woman picked up the phone again. When the other end answered she said, "Hi there, Dr. Cuddy. This is the front desk. You have a visitor down here. Dr. Wilson. He was wondering if he could come up and see you… He says it's important." She winked at House, obviously thinking "Wilson" was going to pledge his undying love as he stood at death's door. "Okay. Yes, great. Thank you."

The woman beamed at House like she had just cured his imaginary cancer. "You may go right up!" she proclaimed. "Room 558."

"Thank you," House said with a smile that tried to look weak.

He practically cartwheeled to the elevator. When he got to the fifth floor and oriented himself, he found 558 and knocked on the door. He heard Cuddy's voice call out, "Would you get that, sweetheart? It's either room service or Wilson."

_Sweetheart._ In all the focus on finding her he'd forgotten Wilson's warning. And now this probably impeccably-groomed successful non-ex-con asshole was going to open the fucking door? House steeled himself. The door swung open.

And there stood Rachel.

His gasp was audible, he knew, because it echoed a little in the hallway. He'd thought of her during these years – years when she'd apparently been growing out bangs and learning to read and turning from a chubby-cheeked toddler into a lanky little kid – but when he was with Cuddy somehow his focus on Cuddy and him and _them _ had evaporated the child from his mind. He felt transported now, standing in front of her as he had years ago at a different threshold.

"House?" she said.

He heard Cuddy stop whatever she'd been doing and whisper, "Shit."

Time had slowed down. House's mind was reeling. He felt like he had vertigo or something and just needed to sit down. He saw Cuddy emerge from the background, her hair wet and clinging to her bare shoulders. He must have looked strange because the pissy look on her face quickly changed to one of cautious concern.

"House?" she asked. She was next to Rachel now. "It's Rachel."

"I know. I know that. Hey, Rachel."

"Hi, House," she said. He looked at her and she smiled a little. Tentative. He had no idea what she knew. And realizing that was making him feel sicker.

At that moment a tinkling cart filled with plates and glasses rounded the corner, pushed by a bellboy in an embellished uniform. He smiled when he saw the doorway gathering. "Dr. Cuddy! Hello!" he called. "I have your dinner, ladies." He seemed oblivious to the tangible tension charging this tiny space. As he tried to maneuver the cart past them into the room, the corner of it caught on a bathroom doorjamb inside and it tipped, most of the dishes falling to the tile floor and shattering.

The bellboy was nearly hysterical. "I'm so, so sorry, Dr. Cuddy. This stupid cart is so tricky to steer. I'm so sorry."

"It's okay," Cuddy reassured him. "It's okay."

The bellboy, who had been starting to clean up with wads of Kleenex, stopped and surveyed the mess. "I will be right back. Right back, Dr. Cuddy. I don't have the tools to clean this up here. But I'll go downstairs, I'll get them, and I'll be right back to fix this."

Cuddy nodded, distracted from the mess by the crazy meeting still happening in the doorway. House was leaning against the doorframe a little, trying to get his bearings, but it felt futile. And then he realized, right then, that it was because the elephant was not only in the room, it was standing on his chest. He awkwardly squatted down to Rachel's level, his thigh screaming at him in a more intense way than usual, trying to stop this.

He looked right at her, her wide eyes staring back at him. "House," Cuddy said, but he ignored her.

"Hey, kid."

She smiled a little again. "Hey."

House swallowed hard. "I have to tell you something."

"House!" Cuddy said more firmly. It was like she was miles away though, a bird in a tree.

"Rachel, do you remember when… When that car crashed into your house?" Rachel's eyebrows knit together for a moment. She nodded solemnly. "I don't know if anyone told you this, but I need you to know…" He cleared his throat. "I did that. I… I drove my car into your house. I crashed into your house." He watched her blink. She did the most adorably adult thing right then – she took a slow deep breath. Cuddy was positively buzzing with tension next to them.

"Why?" Rachel asked him. The million-dollar question. House felt a prickling sensation at the back of his eyes.

"I really don't know. I… I remember being sad… and frustrated…" He thought back to that vision of those happy people gathered around the table, Cuddy laughing with this stranger. "And angry. And I just… freaked out. I wanted to show how upset I was. I don't know how to explain it."

Rachel nodded again. "Like a tantrum?"

House leaned his head against the door frame. The stinging in his eyes was stronger, but he wasn't going to do that. He wasn't going to dump his pain on this kid. "Yeah. I think maybe. But… I'm fifty years old. I'm not supposed to have tantrums." He stared at the ugly pattern on the carpet. "And I need you to know that it wasn't your fault. None of this was your fault." He was acutely aware of his own mother's words tumbling out of his mouth, once meant to reassure an eight-year-old House. He was very close to losing it, so he needed to close this. He took a slow deep breath, like Rachel's, figuring out what he wanted this moment to be in the rest of his life. And it was very simple, really. "I wasn't thinking of you. Or your mother. I was only thinking of myself. And I'm so sorry."

And then this child, this child who seemed to have more presence of mind than he did, reached out and touched his cheek. "I forgive you." She said it like she'd been trained, like it's what you say to people when they apologize for hurting you, only usually it was for an errant ball kicked in the head or for knocking over a tower of blocks.

They heard a commotion and then the bellboy was back, walking crazily down the hall carrying a broom, mop, bucket and various other cleaning implements. "Dr. Cuddy! I'll take care of this mess now. They are remaking your dinner. We're going to fix this right up!" he called cheerily.

House stood up to let the guy pass. He could feel Cuddy looking at him but he couldn't meet her eyes. "I… have to go." He really did or he thought he might faint. He needed to not think for the immediate future, and then let this slowly trickle back into his mind in manageable amounts. He looked down at Rachel and put a hand on her head. "I'll see you again. Okay?"

"Okay, House."

"I'm sorry."

"I know." She smiled at him now, teeth and all.

He turned and started limping down the hall. "House!" Cuddy yelled.

"I'll fix this, Cuddy. I just can't right now."

"House… just…" She clearly had no idea what she wanted him to do.

He continued his walk approaching the bend in the hall that would lead to the elevators. At the turn he stopped and looked at these two people that he could have hurt, could have… He felt that nausea from before. There was Cuddy, beautifully fresh-faced and staring at him. Her hands rested on Rachel's shoulders, pulling the girl against her. The busboy moved in and out, tossing soiled rags into a bin in the hall, either dumb enough to be oblivious to what was happening in front of him or polite enough to pretend he was. The tinkle of the broken glass being gathered was the only noise.

"It really felt like an accident, somehow" he told her softly. "But I think… It's in me somewhere. And I have to figure out how to get it out." He gave a feeble little wave and walked on, getting on an elevator and slumping against the metal wall, staring at his warped reflection in the doors in front of him as he descended back into the everyday world.


	6. Chapter 6

**Chapter 6**

"Greg?"

House was in hell. He figured he must have been wrong about the afterlife and was now spending eternity suffering, paying for his choices.

"Greg, try to listen to me."

There was a woman in a white coat. He saw her ID badge swinging from her pocket as she bent over him. He glanced at her face before closing his eyes again. Everything hurt. Everything was sick.

"Greg, your withdrawal process has become complicated and we're concerned. We're moving you to a hospital where they can do more to alleviate your pain and minimize any physical damage."

Alleviate pain. Minimize damage_._ That didn't sound like hell.

"Greg, listen. You are quickly losing the capacity to make rational decisions. We need to contact your medical proxy. Our paperwork has Dr. Lisa Cuddy listed. Can you give me a verbal assent that that is still your wish?"

_Oh fuck_. His immediate thought was no. He couldn't suck her into more of his shit. So his next thought was Wilson. Have them call Wilson. But…

_After leaving Cuddy's hotel, House had gone back to see Wilson, who opened the door wide and walked back into the kitchen just as he had the first time. "Déjà vu," he commented._

"_I need you to do two things for me," House told him, his mind focused._

_Wilson got two beers out of the fridge and handed one to him. "Does this count?" he asked. He looked at House then, and saw his grave face. "What?" he asked._

"_First, I need you to not get really sick for at least a couple months."_

"_You drive a hard bargain," Wilson replied, grinning at him. "I was penciling the dying thing in for three weeks from tomorrow." When House didn't laugh, Wilson nodded that he understood what he was asking permission for… permission to abandon him for a while. "What else?"_

_House exhaled slowly. "I need you to take me to Mayfield."_

_Wilson stared at him, studying his expression and posture. "Are you losing your marbles again?" he asked gently._

_House sighed. "I'm not sure if I ever found them." Wilson set his beer down and nodded again…_

…No, he couldn't do this to him. Wilson was the one who needed him now. He couldn't make him deal with his puke and shit and pain. It was supposed to be the other way around. There was no choice here.

House felt the restraints on his wrists loosen, and then he felt several hands on him. He was being lifted and he landed on a harder cushioned surface. Then they were moving, wheeling him out of the room and down a hallway. He heard the wheels on the linoleum and the crackle of walkie-talkies as medics communicated back and forth about ETAs and vitals. He forced himself to open his eyes and meet the gaze of the psychiatrist or lawyer or whoever this woman was walking quickly alongside the gurney, her gaze on him earnest and concerned.

"Yeah," he mumbled. Even talking made him start to heave again. "I need Cuddy. And not Princeton-Plainsboro." The woman nodded gravely and was gone, replaced by shiny elevator walls. He felt himself descending. Hands held him down as he started convulsing with the pain. When the doors opened, a hand grabbed his more tenderly. He opened his eyes again to see Nolan.

"Greg, you're gonna be fine. You gotta fight through this, okay?"

"They're calling Cuddy," House told him. He wanted someone to tell him that was okay.

"I already called her," Nolan told him. "She's on her way." There wasn't a way to express the comfort House took from that. And then he felt himself being lifted and he was in an ambulance.

"You hang on. We're not done with you!" Nolan called out before the ambulance doors clanged shut. And in the cool muffled interior of this metal box House drifted back into unconsciousness.

**[H] [H] [H]**

The following days were a blur. She was there for real and in his dreams, sometimes dressed tidily for work, sometimes more rumpled, sometimes wearing sweatpants and a tee shirt, her hair in a ponytail. Different versions of Cuddy throughout his thirty years of knowing her appeared before him. He couldn't sift out what were memories and what weren't.

At one point he came to, groaning in pain and bending his leg close to his cuffed hand, digging into his thigh so deeply he was breaking the skin. "House? House, shhh. It's gonna be okay." She ran a wet wash cloth over his forehead, then guided his leg away from his hand. "You gotta stop or you won't get these restraints off."

He felt… better? Is that the word to use when you still feel like you're wanna die but maybe just a little less than you did? He looked at her through eyes that ached. She met his stare and gave him a small smile.

"You're here."

"Yeah."

"I'm… sorry?" She shook her head like this line of conversation was pointless. Then she looked at him sternly.

"You've been taking a _lot_ of Vicodin." His first instinct was to say _I'm in a lot of pain._ But he stopped himself. He was tired of it. He was tired of his life being defined by his pain. He just wanted there to be something else. So he just nodded in admittance of his gluttony for the drug. "You could have died, you know." He really didn't have anything to say to that just yet so he just kept looking at her. She looked beautiful and worried and even kind of happy to see him.

"How do I know this is real?" he asked. "Maybe I've really lost it this time."

She smiled sadly at him. "If you were hallucinating me next to a bed you were shackled to, there'd be less clothing and less puke."

He gave one little laugh between groans.

"Just cut it off," he moaned at one point. "Cut the fucking thing off. That's what you should have done in the first place."

"After all that preserving this goddamn leg has put us through, we're not cutting if off, idiot," she told him. Then she put both hands on his face, making him look at her. "It's not your leg, House," Cuddy told him, releasing her grasp and smoothing his hair gently. "It's your brain. And I'm not cutting that out." She lifted his hospital gown a little and massaged his thigh, standing up and leaning into it. He moaned with relief, even if the pain was being magnified by his withdrawing brain. She stopped after a few minutes and fingered his scar. "It looks different, amateur surgeon," she teased.

He remembered the last time she'd helped him to a hospital because he couldn't deal with his pain. "I prefer, 'Do-It-Yourself surgeon,' thank you very much."

"Only you get scars on your scars."

She rubbed more and he writhed. "Jesus Christ!" he cursed. He huffed and puffed, clenching his eyes shut.

"We sedated you for while. Do you want me to do that again? Is it too much?"

"I don't want you to leave."

"I won't. If I do, not for long."

"Why are you doing this for me?"

Cuddy sighed. House gestured with his head for a bedpan to puke into, even though there was nothing left to puke up. "I can't leave you alone for the same reason you can't leave me alone," she told him, rubbing his back and holding the bedpan for him. When the nausea subsided he lay back against the bed again, meeting her eyes but too miserable and tired to even ask the rhetorical _Why?_ All he could manage was an eyebrow raise. She shrugged. "I don't want to." Then she pushed the call button and a nurse entered. Cuddy asked for House's supervising physician, telling the nurse they needed to sedate House again. House sighed and relaxed a tiny bit simply from anticipation of the relief. He continued the conversation.

"You might not want to, but… it's probably the right thing to do. Probably simpler, really."

"You're giving lectures about doing what's right and simple rather than what you want? Maybe you really have lost it this time." She winked at him and he smiled a little through his grimace. One of her hands rested on his cheek and her thumb moved slowly back and forth. He wanted to just look at her and be peaceful but something was tearing up his body from the inside out. He took a deep breath and studied her. Her face had become thoughtful and grave. She looked deeply into his face. "How did you forgive me?" she asked him. "After your leg you were so angry and mistrustful of me… How did you get past it?" she asked him.

House thought about it behind closed eyes. He thought back to feeling so betrayed, to hating her for a while, and to the slow process of coming to love her again. "Two things," he concluded. Cuddy perked up, all ears. "You took responsibility for it. You said what you did and didn't pretend it was all some misunderstanding." She nodded. He knew this didn't help her much, as he was the one who needed to fully admit – to himself even - what he had done.

"And second?" she asked, like she was still hopeful that maybe there was a way out of this limbo they were in, a way to open her heart to him again that didn't make her feel so foolish.

"I let you stay in my life, and… over time, you brought more good to me than bad. As bad as that was, eventually… the good stuff won."

Her thumb stopped moving and her hand just cupped his face. He opened his eyes. The doctor came in and he let Cuddy just deal with it, discussing his request for more sedation. The doctor approved the order, the nurse prepared a syringe for the IV and he knew he had only moments more with her like this. When the business was over she looked down at him again. "You think you can do that? Bring me more good than bad if I let you stay?"

He felt sleep coming over him and he never recalled if the words actually made the trip from his brain out his mouth. "I wanna try."


	7. Chapter 7

**Chapter 7**

House sat on the edge of the hospital bed, his bag packed. Cuddy was awkwardly gathering her things, obviously trying to procrastinate the inevitable. "Before you go, I need to say something," he told her. Cuddy faced him and fidgeted. He looked right into her eyes as he spoke. "I could have killed you. I could have killed Rachel. Anyone in that house. I could have hurt you or Rachel or any of them. It was, truly, the most thoughtless thing I've ever done." She stared at him, taken aback. "It's the truth, and I'm sorry," he added.

She leaned against the doorframe. "I don't know what to say exactly."

"You don't have to say anything. That's the beauty of an authentic apology." He sighed, like a heavy weight had been slightly eased. "And I should thank you too. For coming. For all this." He waved his hand around the room to signify all the awfulness that she had helped him through in there.

"House, I… I didn't ask you to do this. This isn't… There isn't some promise that…"

"Relax, Cuddy. I didn't detox for you." She studied him. "I could never get clean for you, or I'd have done it a lot sooner." He saw her shifting her weight from foot to foot before she finally decided to just plop down in the chair across from his bed.

She furrowed her brow. "Was it the Vicodin? The crash? Were you…" She trailed off.

He looked at the speckled tiles on the floor as he spoke. "Was I taking Vicodin? Yeah, of course. Was I high enough to be out of my mind? No."

"Then… what? Why did you do this?"

House swallowed hard and kept his gaze steady on one particular tile with a chipped corner. "The Vicodin _is_ the problem. Well, a huge part of the problem. And I realized it when I saw Rachel."

"You don't want her around someone with an addiction - " Cuddy started to explain for him.

"No," he interrupted. "I mean, yeah, but… It wasn't parental or protective. It was an epiphany." Cuddy waited for more explanation. "I don't know if you'll understand this, for a million reasons."

"Try me."

"I saw her and… the gravity of what I'd done hit me, yes. And something told me I had to tell her. And something else told me I had to get a pill. And you were there and she was there and I knew I couldn't just pop a pill right then. And so I had to listen to the other impulse. I had to… _stay_ there." He pinched the bridge of his nose for a brief moment, right between his eyes. Then he looked up at Cuddy again and he told himself to try to trust her. He concentrated on the silvery blue windows staring back at him. "That's what I do, when I'm in pain," he explained. "I take medicine… I mean, that's how I saw it, how I always felt okay with it. But then I watched Rachel hear this unbelievably crazily upsetting confession from me, and I watched her face. I saw these flickers of confusion and sadness and anger and fear. And then she took this deep breath and she focused on me and what I was saying, how I was apologizing and she was able to get over her emotional response. She didn't get hung up on any one of those emotions, but just kept going and… I guess… connecting with me. And that's what hit me - a six year old was able to do something I couldn't do, Cuddy. The Vicodin… over time, I've just forgotten how to handle the pain. Not just my leg, but any pain. I've forgotten how to just be… human, I guess."

Cuddy stood and stepped closer to him, slowly. She took his hands from their resting spots and held them in hers. "You… have a lot of pain, House. Of all kinds," she told him.

He shrugged. "I know. And I've used that excuse, with others and with myself. But the thing is, there's always some line in the sand, right? Some place where the excuses no longer hold up. And… I wasn't especially high, Cuddy, when I drove into your house. The drugs didn't cause something in that immediate moment. But they caused me to be completely unable to handle those emotions. I saw you in that window and I told myself to leave and this part of me knew everything I was doing was wrong, but this other part of me thought I just… could not weather this. That it would break me, if it didn't find some release." He saw her suck her lips in and he knew it was because that part of him was the giant chasm between them. "And that part of me is new. I was always crabby and skeptical and pompous, but I didn't have to hurt things - or people - to handle my pain." He looked back down at his tile. Cuddy squeezed his hands.

"That's really… amazingly insightful, House."

"Yeah, well. Thank your kindergartener. She's my new shrink, by the way." He looked up and winked at her. Cuddy hugged him to her, pulling his head to her chest. He wrapped his arms around her waist, snuggled against her, and murmured, "The girls miss me."

Cuddy gave a throaty laugh. "I'm glad that even sober you are basically an adolescent. It's reassuring." They just held onto their embrace for a minute. Then Cuddy finally spoke. "I hope… God, I just hope everything for you." He laughed at her ineloquence. He pulled her tighter to him.

"See, like right now, I don't want you to leave and my hands are already getting ready to pat my pockets." Cuddy pulled back and looked down at him. She looked sad.

"I have to go, House."

"I know that. I'm not trying to manipulate you. I'm just trying to help you… understand me."

She nodded. "I'm not sure I'm the one who was so in the dark about all this." He grinned and nodded. "And I'm really proud of you and – I mean, Christ, House, you know I love you. I just think, for the immediate moment, we need a little space. But, you know, I could... could come back."

He made a clicking sound in his cheek. "Yup. You could. That's what I'll keep telling myself. Just stay away from all the other surly genius misanthropic diagnosticians, okay?"

"Oh, don't worry about them," she said, waving her hand like this was the silliest idea in the world. "It's the limp that gets me." She smiled down at him.

"Well, that's a weight off."

**[H] [H] [H]**

House sat there thinking for a few minutes, watching the hustle and bustle that was so familiar playing out in a different medicinally-scented context. He was just about to stand up, grab his bag, and head out, when his phone rang.

"They miss me already, don't they?" he teased when he answered. Cuddy laughed. "I thought we needed space," he reminded her.

"I'm walking away as we speak," she promised. "But…" He waited. "Look, I just have this stuff nagging at me and I don't know if this is the time… but…"

"Jesus, Cuddy. Spit it out. We never do things at the appropriate times."

She sort-of laughed but it morphed into a heavy sigh. "What happened between us… What you did was… very awful…" she trailed off.

"Well, this has been a nice chat," he joked.

"Shut up and just listen. This is hard for me." So he did. "I just… I feel guilty, House, because I recognize… I'm not an idiot. I know that I did a lot of things wrong with us. I am part of this mess. And I feel guilty when I think you are taking the whole burden of our, like, demise on your shoulders."

"I'm not."

"Because, yes, you should have been capable of handling your emotions – even these overwhelmingly hard emotions – in a very different way."

"I know."

"But I also was not handling mine in a functional way."

"I know."

"And that must have frustrated you."

"It did."

"And, in a way, you have a right to hate me."

"I don't."

"Don't have a right or don't hate me?"

"Don't hate you."

There was a long pause. He could hear the clicks of her entering her car, the door slamming shut. He pictured her safely nested inside.

"Why not?"

"Because I love you."

She groaned. "Dammit."

He laughed. "What?"

"It's like even when you're trying to be simple you complicate things. I've spent forever loving you when I know I'm not supposed to, when I know the things you say and the things you do mean I shouldn't. How can you just... stay there, without fighting it?"

"I've told you why. Most of the time, it feels good."

"But what about the rest of the time?"

"I don't worry too much about that."

"Why not?"

"Because it wrecks the good part. It bleeds in, if you get too hung up on the bad part. It metastasizes." There was a long silence. A nurse stepped into his room and began talking to him in a hushed tone until he gave her a dirty look and waved her out.

"I'm sorry I broke up with you the way I did. I was scared of how mad I was at you." House didn't respond. He didn't want to tell her it was okay, but he didn't want her to feel too bad, and he couldn't decide what to say. "And I'm sorry I was so hard on you for so many things during our official relationship. I know you were just being who you always were and suddenly that wasn't okay."

"What, are we listing our sins backwards now?"

He heard her take a deep breath. "And I'm sorry for how I started things, for how I started us."

"Don't be sorry for that, idiot."

"No, I… I did it all wrong, House."

"You… Cuddy, you saved me that night."

"I could have saved you without sleeping with you. I'd done it before."

"It wasn't the sex - " he started to protest.

"No, I know. I know… I just… Look, here's the thing and I just have to say it all because it's the truth."

"I like the truth."

"Well, the truth is, I have loved you so long I can't really remember not. And part of me always thought we would end up together. And that possibility both thrilled and terrified me. Because being with you… it's thrilling and terrifying. And so this part of me kept wanting to preserve that possibility, to keep you there on the horizon. And another part of me wanted to tie it off, to move on to something that made more sense and was tidier and safer for my heart. Because I like everything to be tidy and safe and perfect, House, and you are not even capable of pretending to be perfect. And then, God, then Lucas came along and I don't even fucking know why… He was connected to you a little. So if I did that, if I settled for him, at least I'd have this tangential connection to you… and it just went on like that for a while." She paused and he gave her space to gather her thoughts. "And then he proposed and I was so fucking conflicted about the whole thing, but I just bit the bullet and said yes… and then there you were in my face right away with that goddamn book and your goddamn stubborn way and your help with that girl. And I tried the whole fucking time to just stick to my choice and hate you enough that it would end this. _This!_"she yelled. "This thing we're in right now, which is us ten and twenty years ago just exponentially more complicated. And I tried to scream at you and tell you to leave me alone, but this other half of my core self was screaming at _me_ that I'm crazy and doing the wrong thing." She was crying now. Not heaving or sloppy, but he could hear it in her voice.

"Cuddy, you don't have to explain yourself to me."

"Yes, I do, House, because I make you explain yourself to me all the time." She took a shaky breath. "So I couldn't do it. I couldn't marry someone else and let the possibility of us go."

"I'm glad," he reassured her.

"But the thing is, I did the fucking same thing in reverse. I chose the other path, the path with you, but had one foot out the door the whole time."

That hurt. He'd always felt it and so it was validating, but it hurt him to hear her say it, to admit that she hadn't really been in it with all her heart.

"So I really fucked it up, House. You're exactly right - it will bleed into the good stuff. I was so scared of what we might be that I never really enjoyed what we were. Instead of letting the realization that I couldn't marry someone else lead me to open myself more fully to the _possibility_ of you – to slowly get ready to make that choice – I jumped from one conflicted situation to the other and pulled your heart along with me. And I butchered it. And I'm sorry. I'm really not that good at handling my emotions either, and I can't even blame a narcotic."

House laughed quietly at her joke because the rest of it was so tragic.

"I should have gone there and comforted you and made up with you and taken your stash and put you to bed and just gone home. And then I should have allowed us the space to start, in a way that wasn't linked to pain and addiction and broken hearts. I know it looked like I was being bold and brave, but I was really just too chicken to try it in the clear light of day."

House waited a beat and then asked the only thing he was thinking. "And what are you now, in the clear light of day?"

"I'm taking the time to figure that out. To not make the same mistakes. To not hurt either of us."

He considered her process, her equally-analytic nature. "Can I just suggest one thing?"

"Yeah."

"I've come to the conclusion that if we avoid the pain, a lot of other stuff goes with it."

He heard her click her tongue. "Yeah."

**[H] [H] [H]**

"Well, hello, Greg." Nolan said as House dropped into the chair across from him. House met his eyes for a moment and then started looking around the office. "How are you?"

"Well, I'm visiting a shrink, so you can probably infer a few things from that."

"I also saw you going through withdrawal, so I can infer a few things from that."

"Like?" House tossed back.

"Like something bad happened. Some sort of rock bottom, to make you willing to go through that."

"Or… like something bad happened and that's why I ended up back on drugs in the first place."

"Not as interesting," Nolan explained, which was so Housian it piqued House's interest.

"Why not?"

"Doesn't have to be rock bottom to make someone go back _on _drugs."

"Yeah, my meter ran out and I just couldn't take it." Nolan chuckled and then just waited.

House stopped fidgeting and just sighed, finally settling his gaze on Nolan's face. "You weren't hallucinating. You weren't suicidal. You weren't arrested. So I'm just curious about the chain-of-events."

"Yeah, apparently you have to be hallucinating or suicidal or arrested to get in here. I'm the only one who's denied entrance into the loony bin."

"You don't need in-patient treatment."

"How do you know?"

"You were out there. In the world. And you showed up now, right?"

"So if I stop showing up for appointments, you'll hospitalize me?"

"Have you thought about why it is you _want _ to be in a place most people are trying to get out of?"

House shrugged. "It worked before."

"You think living here is what worked?"

"I just thought I should do it all the same way."

"Why?"

"Because it was successful the first time."

"That was then. This is now."

"Okay, thanks. Wanna open a few more fortune cookies before I pay you for the hour?"

Nolan smiled patiently. "House, you're doing this for a reason, the same way you detoxed for a reason. As your doctor, it would be helpful to know what that reason is." House shifted a little and brushed something off his shoe with the other foot. "There's only one way this is gonna work, House. And I'm not saying you have to tell me everything, but you can't bullshit me. You can't lie to me. Just give me some truth, and we'll go from there."

House scowled. He looked at Nolan. "You know about… about Cuddy and prison and all that?"

Nolan nodded solemnly. "I know some of it, from perspectives other than yours."

"Well, I think I just recently started to… understand it. And… it scares me a little."

"Why?" Nolan asked, as if House had done the most innocuous thing in the world, driving through someone's home and getting sent to prison.

"I think I have forgotten how to handle bad feelings… the really bad ones… without Vicodin." He explained to Nolan how he had come to see Cuddy again, had gone to try to win her back in some valiant way, and been caught unprepared for Rachel and the emotions she conjured up. He explained that moment of being simultaneously in his shoes and hers and admiring her ability to handle it all. He relayed his own memories of handling it all - violence and fear and disregard at the hands of someone who supposedly loved you. "I don't want to ever be that man," he declared, the object of his spite neither specific nor hypothetical.

Nolan looked at him for a while, and House was used to it. Nolan had always taken his time sizing him up, probably trying to decide which of many things to address first. "Well," he began, "it seems pretty clear to me that we need to talk about your father, House."

"There's nothing to say. You know it all anyway."

"I know broad strokes. But you're coming here asking for help with something nuanced – how we handle overwhelming emotions. You're telling me stories to prove you once did it successfully, and saying that you fear you've lost that ability because you relied on painkillers for too long. Well, there isn't a simple formula. We have to go back and figure out how you did it."

House stood up and began pacing a little, not frantically, but slowly around the room. Nolan sat quietly. "That crap doesn't define me. I don't even think about it anymore."

"Are you sure that's a good thing?"

"Look, all I want is to be able to function with people. I don't wanna be Mr. Congeniality or start adopting orphans or something. I just don't want to avoid… avoid loving someone out of fear of hurting them. I wanna be able to handle my own shit without hurting anyone."

"I understand. And I'm suggesting that the roots of that impulse might be very deep."

House whirled on him, pissed off. "You're suggesting that he broke me! And it's bullshit. I never let it get to me."

Nolan stayed quiet while House gathered himself back in, turning to a window and drumming the sill with his fingers. After a minute he asked, "Why is it you're so willing to live on the margins – to be seen as possessing unusual intelligence, to be unusually antisocial, to manage an unusual amount of pain – but being told something run-of-the-mill - that you experienced a classic childhood context for fostering problems in adult relationships - puts you off so much?"

House stared out the window, his brow furrowed. He felt naked, exposed, and so he didn't want to stay but he couldn't leave in this state. "Because if you tell me that that stuff matters, then you're essentially telling me I'm so fucked up I'm unlovable." He swallowed hard and thought of Cuddy, deliberating somewhere about whether he was worth the risks.

Nolan smiled and changed the cross of his legs. "House. I'm telling you that stuff matters. I'm telling you you're fucked up. And I'm telling you it might just take a special kind of love."


	8. Chapter 8

**Chapter 8**

House heard Wilson's horn honk from the street below and laughed to himself as he grabbed his jacket, phone, and keys. They had started regular Friday night outings, a ritual sparked by its inevitable end, though that part went unspoken. The previous week, Wilson - who always drove - had complained about having to park and come upstairs and told House snippily that he was just going to honk from the street in the future. It was just too perfect an opportunity, so House had Wilson's traditional car horn replaced with one that played La Cucaracha. His mental image of Wilson's face at this moment, as the horn blared through the song down on the street, made the scheming and cost completely worth it.

"You're an ass," Wilson said as House slid into the passenger seat.

House laughed. "Hey, I had to know it was you… Didn't wanna drag my crippled ass down for the wrong honk."

"It's too bad you're single and lonely because you have all this time and money at your disposal for annoying me."

"Too bad for you, maybe. It's great for me. It's my consolation as I cry myself to sleep in my empty bed," he said, staring out the window. "After the hookers leave, that is. Hookers don't like when you cry… But you probably learned that the hard way."

Wilson fake laughed as he pulled into traffic. "So how are you?" he asked.

House was quiet for a moment. "Hungry, melancholy, crabby, with a dash of playful."

"Christ. What happened to 'fine?'"

"It's a therapy thing. I'm supposed to stop periodically and fully assess my emotional state, and when people ask how I am, it's a good reminder to do that."

"That could get very annoying."

"So can you. Your point?" House reached over and honked Wilson's horn so that the whole song played again in the middle of traffic. "That's the dash of playful."

They pulled into a spot near the bar they'd been frequenting because it had good burgers and was two doors down from a bowling alley. The alley was a hipster joint, but it made for good people watching and was open late. They walked into the bar, sat in a small booth, and proceeded to continue the weekly ritual by getting drunk as quickly as possible before the food came to soak up their buzz. In these goofy pre-meal moments, they were loose and chatty.

"You know what's really stupid?" Wilson asked House, leaning in over the table.

"Button-fly jeans," House answered immediately. "Did you ever notice they only did that with jeans? No button-fly khakis or button-fly tuxedo pants."

Wilson laughed. "No, no. You'll like the irony of this one," he said, his speech ever-so-slightly slurred. "I'm dying, right?"

House narrowed his eyes. "That _is _stupid."

"House," Wilson chided, clearly sending the message that he didn't want to have this argument again. Then he moved along with his thought. "So if I'm dying I'm supposed to be free from the worries and stresses of life. That's, like, the one good thing about dying. But last night I couldn't sleep and you know what I was thinking about?"

"That hooker you cried in front of?"

"Shut up. I was lying there worrying about all the stuff I have to do to prepare for the actual death. I have to buy a burial plot, a casket, figure out what my headstone should say. So I'm dying, but I'm stressed out about my death." Wilson laughed like this was just hysterical. House studied him.

"You don't have to do that. Someone else takes care of that stuff."

"Yeah, like my loving spouse and devoted kids?" Wilson teased back. "I don't want that to fall on someone."

House nodded. "Yeah, you want us all to be able to just relax and fully enjoy your death."

Wilson met his eyes and smirked, but it turned into a laugh. "Exactly."

Their food came and they busied themselves with condiments and a new round of drinks. "Well on behalf of us sorry saps left kicking around, Wilson," he raised his glass, "I thank you."

Wilson laughed and raised his in return. "To the careful planning of death!"

"And reckless abandon with life!"

"Salud!" they said together before downing shots.

**[H] [H] [H]**

House sat with Nolan, drained after going over some terrible memories - stuff he didn't let himself think about normally. His leg, head, and heart all ached and he felt he had done his part for the day and hoped Nolan would catch the ball he'd lobbed into his court. It was exhausting, all this "mental health" crap.

"So it sounds like one part of your strategy as a kid was avoidance. You'd avoid the house, avoid your father when you were in the house. That's perfectly reasonable, to try to avoid painful situations."

House frowned. "But the whole Vicodin-eases-my-pain thing is bad."

Nolan smiled gently. "Avoidance works in certain contexts, and certain methods of avoidance work better than others."

As much as House resisted the idea of therapy, he had grown to enjoy his conversations with Nolan. He was smart and knew his field exceedingly well. And because House had shunned a lot of the psychological realm, he found himself challenged and provoked when they had these conversations. He liked having new things to chew on.

"Alright, doctor, enlighten me. Why is avoiding my dad different than popping Vicodin to avoid pain?"

"Well, for one, there's the physical effects of long-term drug use on your body, but since you have very little regard for what you put your body through, let's move on." House smirked in response. "Let's consider avoidance as a sort of treatment for a health condition." Metaphors and medicine… he was speaking House's language now. "First of all, there's the precision of the treatment. Avoidance is broad-spectrum. When we avoid situations, we avoid all of it. We can't pick and choose, so avoiding the negative aspects also means missing out on the positive aspects." He looked steadily at House.

"So I open myself up to psychological diarrhea?"

Nolan grinned at him. "In a way," he said. "Just like the loss of good bacteria causes physical problems, the loss of positive experiences or interactions can cause emotional and relational problems." House nodded. "With your father, however, it sounds as if there wasn't a lot of potential for positive outcomes, so these metaphorical 'side effects' were probably minimal." House nodded in agreement with that point. "But the same is not true for avoiding large swathes of life by getting stoned. There is positive potential in life, Greg. In people."

"You have to say that or you'd be out of work." House was teasing him and Nolan smirked, but ignored it.

"Secondly, there's the accuracy of the treatment. Avoiding being around your father was a very accurate treatment for preventing his assaults. Though it began as an accurate treatment for leg pain, I would argue that Vicodin for psychological pain is as accurate as aspirin for a gunshot wound."

House kept his face steely. Nolan was making sense but House felt this pull, this attachment to his drug still and, in a perverse way, didn't want to sell it out, to pretend it hadn't helped him through hard times in its own way. So just to be difficult he pointed out, "Aspirin helps with pain. Helpful if you've been shot."

"And thins blood. Not so helpful."

"Well, pain relief is necessary while treatment for the gunshot wound is happening."

"So all these years, Vicodin eased your pain while you were actively treating your wounds?" Nolan raised an eyebrow at him.

House sulked. "Touché, Freud."

"All that said, you do have a contradictory tendency to walk right into suffering, at times, and I'd encourage you to consider the avoidance of suffering, when possible, to be a reasonable course of action."

House's mind flickered over the past years and things he had done that he knew would bring pain. He thought of Cuddy and his trepidation from the beginning, his knowledge that it would eventually hurt like hell. But he didn't want to talk about Cuddy right now. He was too tired already. So instead…

"What about Wilson?" he asked.

"What about Wilson?"

"He's dying. He's gonna die. Soon. And… that's gonna hurt. Do I just avoid him, avoid further attachment so that when he leaves me it won't hurt so bad?"

Nolan reclined further into his chair, studying House. "Hmm. Interesting question. Should we avoid engaging with people when we know it will bring us pain?" He sat there, though, as if he knew the answer and was just indulging House's being difficult.

"You see? Misanthropes of the world unite!" House shouted triumphantly, raising his arms above his head.

"Ah, but misanthropes can't _avoid_ people. They just hate people."

"Because they're unavoidable."

"Okay, so you may avoid people because you can't be bothered. They offer nothing to you. You're apathetic. Apathy is the absence of feeling. Hate, well… You still care. And why would someone avoid people out of hating them? What makes us hate?"

"They annoy us," House answered. Nolan nodded. "They slow us down, hold us back."

Nolan waited for more, but House was resistant, so he offered, "Dare I say, they hurt us?"

"Fine, yes, but then avoiding people avoids the hurt. As you said, it worked with my dad."

"With whom there was very little potential for goodness. Would you say the same about Wilson?" House shook his head, relenting a little. "And whether or not the good times you both have in the next months will be enough to help ease the incredible loss you will feel when he dies… well, only time will tell. But - as a person, not a therapist - I'd say people roll those dice more often than not."

"And then the pain comes. Then what?" House asked.

"Often we turn to others for help with that."

House made a face. "Blind leading the blind. 'Hey gunshot wound victim, can you help me with my stab wounds over here?'"

Nolan laughed. "That's not realistic, Greg. That's not what we do. We go to people who _can_ help us with our injury. People who aren't presently injured themselves. People who are experts in healing." House looked sullen. "But you, in the metaphor," Nolan continued, "you would sooner bleed to death in the gutter than stumble into an ER."

House scowled at him, but gently. "I'm here, aren't I?"

"But it doesn't come naturally. It isn't your instinct. Right now you still have a sense of your own power and strength. _You_ did this, _you _made these choices to detox, to seek help. Last time we did this, someone else was making you and you were far less forthcoming. I'm waiting to see, when the chips fall, if you've really learned it's safe to come here. I'm wondering if I'll see you when you're vulnerable."

House sat in silence for a very long time, mulling over what he'd said. The tricky thing with emotions is that in the hypothetical we feel so powerful over them, like preparing for a hurricane or flood, storing food and generators. But when the storm really comes, we still might freak out.

After a full five minutes, Nolan asked gently, "What was it like, at home as a child, when you were vulnerable, when you were sick or hurt?"

"What do you mean?"

"Well, if you were sick - home from school - what would your mother do?"

Delighted to talk about his mother instead, House explained. "Mom stuff. Chicken soup. Medicine. All that."

"Would she sit with you? Bring you comic books? Stroke your hair?"

House considered it. "Yeah. Sometimes."

"How about if you were injured? How about when your father injured you? Would she do the same things?"

House knit his brow, trying to sift through fuzzy memories. He wanted to be very accurate, in this case. "Um, not as much. I mean, she'd treat the injury, but she wanted to move on and get past it. She'd tell me it wasn't my fault, make excuses for his temper, and kind of… try to get us all back to normal."

"So would it be accurate to say she attended to your physical pain, but not your emotional pain after these assaults?" House thought about it and nodded. "When your father assaulted you emotionally - embarrassing you, threatening you - did your mother address it with you?"

House shook his head. "No. She'd try to change the subject. Again, move us all along."

Nolan took a deep breath and House steeled himself. Deep breaths meant tough questions. "When you were sick or injured, what would your father do?"

"Nothing." House answered flatly.

"There is no nothing," Nolan challenged him. "Even choosing not to act is making a choice."

House sighed. "Fine, he _chose_ not to do anything," he said in a mocking voice.

"How did you interpret that? What did you think he felt about you at those times?"

"He was disgusted," House said, flat again. "He hated weakness. He hated when people let pain overcome them."

"People or you?" Nolan probed. House considered this. "When your mother was sick or hurt, did he ignore her too?"

"No," House said slowly. He didn't know where Nolan was going with all of this, exactly, but he had that epiphany feeling, realizing suddenly that his dad's lack of compassion, though present and cold and hard, had not been ubiquitous. He remembered him caring for his mother during her migraines. He remembered him speaking tenderly to the families of soldiers he had worked with. He hadn't hated all weakness; he had hated House's weakness. "Just me." House croaked. He stood and paced, running a hand across his hair, over his beard. "He hated me, I guess."

Nolan clicked his tongue. "I don't know what he felt for you. That's hard to say without talking to him. Even if he loved you, though, we know his behaviors didn't exhibit love. But…" he trailed off.

"But what?" House asked, pausing his pacing to look down at Nolan.

Nolan glanced at his watch. "You okay? We have… weeks, months, years… You wanna call it a day?"

"No, I want you to tell me what your head-shrinking little radar is telling you?"

"Okay. I promise I will. But first do something for me?"

"What?" House replied, rather coldly.

"Stop and articulate to yourself, to me, what you're feeling right now."

House felt his lips - tightened into a line. He felt his forehead - creased, his brows drawn together. He felt his bodily need to be up, moving, large. "I'm angry."

Nolan nodded. "And how do you feel about me right now? Do you wanna be around me?"

"I don't know."

"Do you want to hurt me?"

"No," House answered immediately, defensively.

"Maybe not punch me, but do you wanna make me feel stupid, make me feel inept, make me feel like you are better than me?" House was silent. He felt choked up. He had been overwhelmed by a mind full of insults to throw at both Nolan and all his theories. "Okay, now stay with me. How did you feel a few moments ago, before the anger? What I want you to see, Greg, is that anger is secondary to something. Some other emotion causes us to get angry. We feel scared, embarrassed, sad… and then we might get angry. What feeling made you angry?"

House took a breath and thought back to two minutes ago, which felt so far away already. His parents, his pain. "I felt… wronged. I felt… pissed off-"

"No, before the pissed off."

"I felt rejected. Like he didn't want me around. Didn't want me to… thrive." The anger was dissipating. It still felt dangerously close, like an animal held at bay, but it wasn't biting at his limbs anymore.

"You felt rejected by your father. Unloved.

"Unwanted."

"Scared."

"Powerless."

Nolan nodded. "And it makes you mad. And that is very normal."

House exhaled. He walked a little closer to the sitting area again. "But if you don't recognize it, if you don't see what is happening to you emotionally in these situations, you will run into contexts in which you lose control of your behavior. Your anger will take over. The irony of the avoidance, Greg, is that you cannot avoid everything, so it leaves you even more powerless in a way. You cannot avoid all of the pain in the world. And so you have to deal with the little stuff - the small moments of pain - to learn how to cope with the big stuff. This isn't just letting go of the narcotic numbing. You have to learn how to stay in the pain for a little while. What you've been doing…" Nolan shook his head. "You flee or you fight. And that isn't working."

House sat down shakily, his unspoken commitment to try to do neither. "Okay. So I'll feel it. What do you want to say to me that you're scared to say? I won't insult you."

Nolan exhaled a puffy little laugh. "I'm just scared for what you're ready for."

"Ready or not."

Nolan blinked. "It occurred to me that you might be able to relate to something I suspect your father felt, when he ignored your suffering."

"What's that?" House steadied himself, already feeling an ugly prickle over being compared to his father.

"Often – not always, but often – people have the most difficulty watching the suffering of those they've hurt themselves, whether they caused it or not. Seeing the hurt, and knowing you may have caused something similar… It provokes guilt. People console themselves with the idea that the people they hurt can take it. Seeing their vulnerability takes that consolation away."

"Are you talking about Wilson?"

"Are you?"

House leaned forward, propping his elbows on his legs, and stared at the ground. Nolan went further. "I mean what are you gonna do when Wilson dies?" Nolan asked. House looked up at him. "Drive your car into his grave?" House saw him holding his breath, waiting to see if his attempt to push him had gone too far. House liked it. Nolan was aggressive, like House was with patients. If he saw his opening to do the job, he did it, even if it was risky.

"I don't know," House answered. The concept of no Wilson was still unthinkable for him. He laid his head in his hands. "He did break me," he mumbled, forlorn.

Nolan leaned forward and put a hand lightly on House's shoulder. "There's dead, and there's sick. You're not broken, you're injured. This is what I do, Greg. And I told you from the beginning of this… I'm not done with you yet."

**[H] [H] [H]**

House was playing the piano when Cuddy called him late one evening. "You have a case?" she asked him.

"Not at the moment," he told her.

"Good, because I have one for you." She proceeded to tell him about a patient in her hospital and his mysterious, persistent, and worsening symptoms. No one was making any progress with the patient and she knew House would. "I hope you don't mind. I just don't want someone to die because I'm being coy."

"No problem. It's always the same old story. The ladies come crawling back on their hands and knees for one more experience with my huuuuuge intellect." He listened to her silent response. "Stop rolling your eyes." Cuddy laughed.

"I'm emailing you a bunch of stuff. I don't know if you can see the images well enough that way, but it's a start. I already FdExed you copies of everything, though, so you should get that at PPTH tomorrow."

"Pretty confident I'd do you a favor, huh?" He was already moving to his laptop to check what she'd sent.

"You usually come through for me," she said. He sort of snorted a laugh, deflecting. But still, it hung there for a sec. "You do, House. When I let myself ask you." They were silent for a moment more.

"Why do you have to let yourself?" he asked. "I mean, why is it hard to ask me?" He swallowed, a little nervous about this somewhat casual conversation's turn for the serious. She was quiet.

"I'm shrugging," she laughed. "Like you can see that." He heard her sigh quietly. "I don't know if it's about you, House. Maybe it's me. I feel like you like me strong."

House opened the email from her, glanced over various stats and measurements while he considered what she'd said. "I do," he admitted. It's part of why she was different from other women, from other people. It's why he had trusted that he could let things fly with her. She could _take it_. She could take _him_. He was still rolling the idea over in his mind when she caught him off guard.

"Listen, Rachel's with my mom all week because her school was closed. I'm picking her up Friday. Would you… wanna grab a bite? Just, talk a little. I'd like to know how you're doing."

House felt elated, then conflicted, then disappointed in a matter of seconds. "I would love to, but I can't."

"Oh." Cuddy sounded disappointed and it killed him. "Hot date?" she asked, and he could tell she was only half-kidding.

"Cuddy." He shook his head, though she couldn't see it. "Come on."

"What? You might date, House."

"Will you just shut up? I go out with Wilson on Fridays now." His mind tried to find a way to make both things work, but it was futile and he was committed - after the conversation he'd overheard between the two of them back in Wilson's office - to do the right thing. "I don't want him to worry I'm gonna bail on him, Cuddy."

"I understand," she said, but she still sounded wounded. And then he realized that she really did understand, and she was jealous.

"I'm trying to learn from my mistakes."

"Well… That's good. Another time."

"I hope so." They were silent and he was so, so tired. He didn't know how to unravel all these threads with her yet. And so even though he wanted to stay connected to her voice, he was conscious of the risk of tangling things worse. So he said, "I'll call you tomorrow about liver-tumor-with-seizures-guy. Or, knowing me, maybe at three in the morning."

She laughed. "I knew you were the man to call."

"Go to sleep, Cuddy. I'll bother you later."

"Okay."

"And, Cuddy?"

"Yeah?"

"It doesn't mean I don't like you not strong." He hung up.

**[H] [H] [H]**

Wilson walked into his office and found a file folder tied shut with a ribbon, a greeting card stuck underneath. He opened the card to find a jubilant birthday greeting with a balloon motif, only the "birth" had been crossed out with a black sharpie and "death" had been scrawled in its place. The inside read "Hope your special day is filled with friends, fun, and celebration." He grinned at House's black humor and opened the file. Inside were receipts for the purchases of burial plots, caskets, and headstones. Two sets. Next to each other. He marched over to House's office. House was staring out his glass door juggling his ball. Wilson waved the folder at him. "You're a sick bastard," he said, but he was smiling.

House smiled back. "It was a dying man's wish. A lame wish about wanting to reduce deathbed stress, but such is the man," he said, waving his hand dramatically toward Wilson. He smirked, but noticed that Wilson was growing pale. House saw him sit down slowly, like an old man. "Oh, relax, Wilson. I'm not gonna kill myself or something. I just don't give a shit what happens to my body when I bite it and thought it would be funny to mess with all the people who think we're gay."

"House…I don't want this." Wilson looked sick.

House dropped into his desk chair across from him. "Alright. Geez. You really think I'm gonna mess with you from the fucking grave? I'll be cremated and sprinkled over the Playboy Mansion, then. Give the plot to one of your ex-wives."

"No, House, I… I don't wanna die yet."

House stopped bouncing his ball and looked at him seriously. "I don't want you to die yet."

"But I don't want to get sick. I don't want to get sick and die anyway," Wilson said, almost to himself.

"But you might get sick and then _not die_, Wilson." House leaned across his desk, willing him to have a change of heart. "This could have a happy ending."

Wilson looked up at him, his eyes wet. "But…" He looked undone. "If I just accept death, I don't have to risk the bigger tragedy. I don't have to fight only to lose."

House studied him and finally got it. He finally understood what Wilson was doing, why it seemed ludicrous to everyone but him. "You're avoiding," House told him. "You're trying to avoid pain. But if you do that, you'll miss this great potential, Wilson."

Wilson looked at House, rather stunned. "But I _am_ dying."

House shook his head with fresh resolve. "You're not dead. You're sick," he told him, a wide smile spreading across his face. "This is what I do. What _you_ do. And we're not done yet."


	9. Chapter 9

**Author's note: Sorry for the delayed update. The stomach flu ran through my house and vomit and poop do not lead to romantic thoughts. But everyone is well now and I am wrapping up this story with this final chapter. I want to warn any readers that don't like explicit sex scenes that this final chapter does have one. (Woo-hoo! For the other readers) I didn't want you to be surprised after 8 smut-free chapters.**

**Chapter 9**

House was sitting in Wilson's living room, listening to the women on the television bicker and to Wilson retching into a bowl. When he was done, House got up without a word, taking the bowl with him to clean out in the sink. He returned just as silently to his place on the couch at Wilson's feet while Wilson stared at the stupid reality show from half-closed eyes.

At one point Wilson mumbled. "This sucks."

House shrugged. "It beats a casket, though."

Wilson raised his head to look at him. "I meant this show. Can we watch something else? Doesn't the chemo patient get control of the remote?"

"You're too weak and confused."

"Seriously, House. I'm not sure these Housewives of Wherever even beat a casket. They're not even hot to look at."

"They are if you don't look at their faces." He studied the screen with narrowed eyes and tilted his head a little. "Well, a few of them are."

Wilson sighed in defeat and relaxed back into the pillow. House looked over at him, pale and child-like, curled under a blanket. He handed him the remote. "No romantic comedies, no sit-coms, and no Lifetime. Unless you wanna empty my barf bowl."

Wilson reached for the remote and started scrolling down the program guide screen. He glanced over at House for a second. "You know, if I was alone right now," - he cleared his throat quietly -"I'm not sure this would beat a casket."

House didn't look at him, but nodded at the screen. "I said no Lifetime, Wilson."

Wilson found a Hitchcock marathon just beginning and they settled in for the long haul.

**[H] [H] [H]**

House stayed two nights at Wilson's, and got home late after helping to get him to bed the final evening. He was just settling in for a restless night dozing on the couch when he heard the knock… that familiar knock. He opened the door and there she stood, looking at him earnestly and holding a small wrapped gift in her hands. He felt a strange mixture of delight and apprehension. After all, these romantic midnight reunions didn't have a great track record when it came to longevity and he just didn't know if he could take anymore soul-crushing in the near future.

"Hi," she said tentatively.

"Hey," he answered. "It's not my birthday," he added, nodding at the gift in her hands. She held it out to him and he took it.

"Open it," she instructed. House met her eyes first, saw her shy smile. Then he unwrapped the gift.

"Band-Aids," he observed.

"A multi-pack. Different sizes and shapes," she pointed out. House studied her, not entirely sure where this was going. "For your heart," she explained. "I'm here for the mending, once again." She looked nervous now, staring intently into his face. House sighed. Part of him wanted to scoop her up into his arms and enjoy a new beginning, but part of him feared the later stages of this cycle they were in. Cuddy took a step forward. "Say something," she said.

House stepped back and opened the door wider, gesturing for her to come in. He shut the door and they stood there, assessing each other. "So you've come to some kind of conclusion about me?" he asked. "That I'm salvageable?"

Cuddy shook her head, her curls bouncing. "I've come to a conclusion about us," she clarified. "That we're salvageable."

"Why?" he asked.

"I thought you'd be happy," she said, the beginnings of hurt showing through.

"I am, Cuddy," he said quickly, not ready to lose the potential. "I just… I'm a lot of other things too."

She nodded. "I've been checking in on Wilson," she explained. "He's told me about you. How you bought him those… the burial plots and all that. How you convinced him to try to fight this. How you've been helping him, taking care of him." She swallowed hard. "I realized that… You know, a relationship isn't this stagnant thing that gets formed and checked off as done. I watch the two of you and I realize that a relationship is dynamic and adaptable and exists in different states of health in different contexts. I realized… I don't have to fix you, House. I don't have to fix myself. We just have to find our ways of making it work because we want…" She trailed off, putting her guard up, he saw. Then she added quietly, "It's like at work. We made no sense there either and would disagree and fight, but we always found a way. You never quit and I never fired you. We made it work."

House understood what she was saying and thought it sounded good, but he was also aware of Cuddy's ability to sound healthy and rational in the hypothetical, but freak out when the rubber met the road. He nodded at her, then began walking around his living room, turning on all the lamps and lights he passed along the way. He felt her watching him, saw her closed-in, buttoned-up demeanor. She was scared, not of making a mistake, he realized, but of him rejecting her this time. When he'd turned on every light, he moved to the middle of the room and looked at her. "This is as close as I can get to the 'clear light of day' at the moment," he explained and she laughed a little. She started to move toward him, thinking this was an invitation, but he held his hand out in a gentle gesture for her to stop, to stay where she was.

"Cuddy, I want you to really see what you are doing here," he told her seriously. He put a hand on his thigh. "This hurts, at least a little, every moment of every day." She nodded, almost reverently. Then he gestured at his whole body, using both hands to try to indicate his very existence. "And this hurts, at least a little, every day." She didn't nod this time. She just stood there and listened. He cleared his throat. "And just like I can walk, but it's impaired… I can be this man for you, but it's impaired." He swallowed. "And not _everything_ is that big stuff. Toilet seats and toothbrushes… I mean, I can just be a dick like anyone else." He grinned a little sheepishly. "But you have to understand that the big stuff, the screw-ups that are the hardest for you to handle… They're connected to who I am. A fucked-up man. And I'm not saying I can't try harder and get better, but I've realized that when I hurt you most it's because it's when I'm hurting most, so who the fuck is supposed to make it work then?"

Cuddy looked a little panicked. "House, I'm not saying it's always going to be pretty and nice and perfect."

"But that's what you want."

"Not as much as I want you," she amended. "That's what I finally get." She took a deep breath. "This time without you in my life, even though I was so angry and hurt, has still been filled with missing you. What you have been to me is not… It's not nothing. In my 'new life'" - she made quotations with her fingers –"people would occasionally ask me if I had been married before. And I had this nice technicality for saying no, but when I considered the spirit of their inquiry – Was there a person whose life had mingled with mine, who had been part of my daily existence and was no longer? – I mean, I was full of shit. What mattered is what you were to me, not what we called it. I see now that we've grown together. We're intertwined. We can't separate anymore or we'll wither. I will never not be hung up on you. I think I knew it on some level all along. That's why I was less mad about you smashing my house than I was about how that smashed our potential. I cursed you giving me no reasonable choice."

"It still isn't a reasonable choice and I want you to realize that sooner than later. For very selfish reasons I need you to deal with that. Right now. I've hurt you. I know I'll hurt you again. And it's not because I don't love you because I do, Cuddy. I love you." He swallowed the lump in his throat. "But I'm not good at it."

He saw a tear in her eyelashes. "Neither am I. But I think I'm able to approach this differently now. Our relationship doesn't have to work all the time, so long as we keep working _at it_. As long as we don't just _try_ this, but we _do_ this. We commit to it."

"I don't think I'm the one who needs the lecture on committing." He needed to air his grief too.

She looked at him seriously. "I always come back to you, House. For what that's worth. For what that offers as an amends. For what that does for your fears."

He looked at her, considered her fears and wounds. "I really believe," he cleared his throat again. "I think that all we are is love. Even the hate, the anger, the pain… It's all rooted in love. For what that offers, what it does for your fears."

She smiled weakly. "Then my proposal," she began hesitantly, "and the thinking behind the Band-Aids, is that we just do it. We do this and take it as it comes, and we heal each other when we hurt each other." He nodded carefully. "But there are limits," she added. "I don't get to just leave suddenly and you don't get to… break dishes."

"Let's just say no emotional or physical assaults, shall we? It's so romantic." He winked at her. Cuddy walked to him quickly and instead of kissing, they hugged. He pulled her tightly against him, lifting her toes off the ground, and she buried her face in his neck and they stood there, breathing, squeezing, hanging on. "You know this is gonna be harder than just dealing with my vomit."

She laughed. "I know." She bit his neck lightly. "It's also gonna involve more than buying twelve toothbrushes at a drugstore." He set her down and she looked up at him and his smile faded. He looked at her carefully, wanting her to see how serious he was. "Just don't assume I'll hurt you."

Cuddy blinked slowly, staring right back into his eyes. "That's hard for me."

"I know."

She moved her hands to sides of his face. "Just tell me when I've hurt you."

"That's hard for me."

She nodded and he bent his forehead to hers. They stood there for a while, not talking, barely moving, because this moment was one of the good parts, before the fear, the work, the fucking up. This was the moment of optimism, recklessness, hope.

Slowly Cuddy tipped her face up more and he saw her lower her lids when her lips met his mouth, closing over his top lip. She whispered lightly against his lips, "We'll heal."

"Scars on scars," he murmured back.

Then he let go. He abandoned his resistance and hesitation and fears and jumped. He found her mouth again and slid his lips over familiar flesh, welcomed a familiar tongue, and felt the familiar shape of her body slide into his embrace. They kissed slowly, luxuriously, with their hands meeting and crossing over each other as they reached for each other's faces. "Tell me you won't disappear in four hours," he said to her through deep breaths. She smiled against his mouth and he felt her teeth.

"Is that how long this is gonna take?" she teased. Now he grinned against her.

"How soon you forget," he growled, and he scooped her tighter against him and limped her crazily to the couch. He gently pushed her onto the seat and bent over her, kissing her while he reached any lights nearby to switch them back off, subduing the bright glare he had created. When he broke their kiss to reach across the back of the couch, he returned to find her staring up at him, smiling.

"What?" he asked, smirking, ready for some witty barb.

She shrugged. "For the first time since…" She trailed off and he stood above her, rubbing his thumb across her cheek, urging her on. "It's stupid," she said, averting her eyes, "But you are the person who, literally, wrecked my house, but you are also the person who makes me feel like I'm finally home."

He nodded gravely in spite of her smile because the irony of it would always be sad. "I promise, I-" he began to apologize again, but she cut him off.

"See the good in that, House. Even after all of it, you're still my home. If we can get through these last years…" She shook her head in disbelief. "We can handle anything."

Now he gave her a small smile. That's what he'd wanted from the beginning, for her to give them the chance to handle it. "But can you handle this?" he asked, pushing her back on the couch.

Cuddy smirked. "I dunno," she purred. "Can you handle this?" She threw her arms back over her head, arching her back seductively.

House stared at her, mesmerized by this beautiful woman stretched across his couch. He bent just enough to let one hand graze the top button of her shirt. "Can you handle this?" he asked, deftly releasing the button with one hand. He took his time, moving carefully to each button down the front of her shirt while Cuddy's rapid breathing caused the shirt to fall open as her chest heaved.

When he was done, he went back to staring at her. She whispered, "This?" as her hand slid down her own body, beginning at her neck and stopping at her side to slide down the zipper of her skirt and wriggle it down a little. She was trying to grin mischievously but he could tell she was as moved as he was and the banter was getting lost amid the emotions.

He hooked a finger in the top of her panties and looked at her. She wriggled back on the couch to make room, inviting him to climb on top of her. But he didn't. He just watched her. "How are you?" he asked her.

She gave a snorty little laugh. "Fine. How are you, Dr. House?"

He smiled a little. "I mean it. Right now. How are you feeling?"

Cuddy blinked rapidly a few times, the way she did when thrown a curve ball. Then he saw her eyebrows knit while she considered it. "I'm happy," she answered.

"That's it?" he asked. "Not afraid? Not doubtful? Ashamed? Torn or equivocal?"

She reached down and held his hand that sat on her pelvis. "I'm all of those things, all of the time, about everything," she explained. "But right now, with you, I'm also something I'm _not_ always. I'm happy."

He nodded, satisfied with her answer. He sat at her feet and pulled the hips of her skirt, wriggling them down her legs as she lifted them. The sight of her lifting her pelvis in this simple moment was already so erotic for him, he wondered how patient he could be before devouring her. She was half-naked, looking at him, and he ran his hands up her legs to meet at the tops of her inner thighs, his thumbs just grazing her heat through her panties and his palms gently pushing one leg into the couch back and the other onto the floor. Cuddy looked at his face, his hands, his face again. She was almost vibrating under his touch.

"It's not just the sex, you know," she moaned in a most-sexual way. "I want to be the one you show it all to. I want to show it all to you. The sex is… a metaphor." She laughed breathlessly. House ran a hand down her body, his other still poised teasingly on her thigh, and she writhed under his touch. "If you can think this much," - she gasped - "about how to handle me psychologically," - he slid his hand back up her shape, curving it along the nape of her neck -"moving carefully and slowly when I seem to need that," - she stretched luxuriously for his hand to trace her again - "and aggressively when I seem to need that," - she put a hand on his other and slipped him under her panties - "I think you'll do fine." She winked at him and he grinned. He felt her desire as he explored her, felt his own mounting urge to be touched, and he shifted his body on top of her.

"So what you're saying is, I should fuck your psyche?" he teased in her ear, kissing along her jaw, his fingers finding her clit.

She laughed buoyantly and it mingled with her gasps and moans as he touched her, tasted her. "Yes! Exactly. Fuck my psyche!"

"I'll share this approach with Nolan. Maybe he could get a paper out of it."

Cuddy was frantically unbuttoning his buttons now and gave up halfway and proceeded to just tug his shirt and tee over his head. She started to fumble with his belt but his mouth was on her breasts now, his free hand pulling the fabric away. He felt her efforts pause as she basked in his attentions and he was delighted that everything he wanted to do to her – lick her skin, touch her sex, moan her name – was exactly what she wanted done. It was so elegant.

She began bucking up against his hand, her hands in his hair as he traveled across her body and face. Their mouths were close and open when he heard her little gasps-of-no-return and she squealed and sighed her bliss against his lips, his name slurred and blended with nonsense. He felt her tremble and twist beneath him. He felt the power of her letting go. He was smirking a little as he watched her face recover, all licked lips and fluttering eyelashes.

"What are you grinning about?" she asked him, pushing up against him in spite of her legs still trembling. He rolled back into a seated position and she promptly straddled him.

"What it's gonna be like when your psyche does _that_," he told her.

She smiled at him, sliding her shirt all the way off. "I'm guessing it'll be something like that double-rainbow guy video," she teased.

House wrinkled his face up. "That's not hot."

"Oh, sorry," she replied coolly, unhooking her bra so the damn thing finally fell between them. "Better?" she asked.

"Huh?" he grunted, staring at her chest.

Cuddy pushed up on her knees so that he had to look up into her face, a curtain of dark curls framing her swollen lips and glazed eyes. She looked wild and beautiful and perfect. When she began attacking his pants again, he gladly assisted her and within moments nothing but her pesky panties were in their way.

"This is like _your _psyche," she teased, grinding down against him, making his breath hiss through his teeth. "Even when I'm so," – grind – "so" – slide – "close" – push – "you keep up these tiny obstacles." She grinned at him evilly.

House found the sexy little vee at the back of her panties and with two strong hands tore the damn thing apart with one firm tug. Cuddy gasped and then looked at him with excited eyes, laughing. "It's a metaphor," he said, shrugging. He slid the scrap of fabric away, and within seconds she was guiding him inside of her. As they moved together, their hips finding a common rhythm, their hands sculpting each other's muscles, their mouths dancing toward, then away from each other, they exclaimed and whispered their grief's relief, their hope's fruition, their love's match. The crescendo was a physical release, and House was acutely aware of his mouth around Cuddy's chin, his hands on her ass, and her arms around his head. But the closing notes were an emotional release, a setting free of all they had stored in their minds as warnings, cautions, painful reminders; all the hang ups; all the fuck ups.

Cuddy was curled in his lap, her head on his shoulder, and he felt her hair tickle his face with each rise of his chest as he caught his breath. "I missed you," she whispered. He patted her rump affectionately, still breathless. "Did you miss me?" she asked, almost like it was a game. He shook his head and she perked up a little. "You didn't?" she asked with playful eyes, a hand sliding over his bicep and down his chest.

"I never let you go," he told her. And his eyes were wide open.

**[H] [H] [H]**

"Just call in sick," he moaned from his bed as he watched her fasten her earring and slip into her pumps.

"I can't," she said in her all-business tone. "I have a huge meeting this afternoon and I have a two-hour drive back."

"It's not even light out!" he protested, gesturing at the dim windows.

She smirked at him. "Some of us use these things called clocks, caveman."

She walked over and kissed him, pulling back to smile at him as she ran her hand over his cheek. "I'll call you later, and I'll see you soon" she reassured him. "We'll figure out how the hell we're going to do this with a one-hundred-fifty-mile commute and your incessant demand for instant gratification."

"I could live in your car," he suggested.

She stood up and looked down at him. "We'll add that to the brainstormed list, okay?"

He smirked at her and wolf-whistled as she strutted out of his room. The silence of his apartment screamed in his ears after he heard the door click shut behind her, and he couldn't stand it so he called her immediately.

"What?" she demanded when she answered, sounding simultaneously amused and perturbed.

"You know, it's 6:30 am. You could go to work in time for your meeting but just say you hit traffic," he suggested.

She hung up.

House lay there staring at his ceiling, wondering why it felt different – better - this time, and wondering if it should. He was so truly tired of trying so hard and being so careful and analyzing everything, and he wondered if that, ironically, was the difference. Maybe if they didn't think about it all so much, their fucked-up minds wouldn't be able to meddle with it all. He lay there replaying the night in his mind, missing her warmth next to him, but confident – in a way he'd never been - that he'd have it again. Still, though, that little itch of fear and discontent scrabbled around his mind, not letting him be fully relaxed, fully content. How was he? he asked himself in his inner Nolan voice. Relieved, sated, excited, worried, self-conscious…

He heard his front door click open and the sound of stilettos tapping back down the hallway toward him.

…happy.


End file.
